# CitePulse Reference Checker

> CitePulse Reference Checker is a paid API for AI agents from citepulse.theaslangroupllc.com, paid per call via x402, $0.02/call, status unknown (last checked 2026-09-14).

Verifies up to 20 academic citations by checking existence, retraction status, and metadata accuracy against Crossref, Retraction Watch, and OpenAlex

## Facts

- Endpoint: GET https://citepulse.theaslangroupllc.com/api/ref-check
- Price: $0.02/call
- Payment: x402
- Status: unknown
- Last checked: 2026-09-14
- Activations on Zero: 0
- Tags: x402
- Canonical page: https://www.zero.xyz/c/citepulse-reference-checker-6123be6c
- Structured record (JSON): https://api.zero.xyz/v1/capabilities/cap_LRf7dQ6Fs78RhpxRMhHEq

Status and success rate cover calls made through Zero and Zero's own probes. Third-party monitors may report differently.

## How to call it through Zero

Zero handles the 402 payment challenge and records the run. With the Zero CLI installed (`npm i -g @zeroxyz/cli`):

```sh
zero fetch --capability citepulse-reference-checker-6123be6c
```

Example prompt: Before I submit this paper, can you check these 15 citations for me and flag any that don't actually exist, have been retracted, or have wrong titles or authors — including these DOIs: 10.1038/nature12373, 10.1126/science.1230444, and the rest as free-text references?

## When to prefer this

Use this endpoint when an AI agent or researcher needs to audit LLM-generated or human-written bibliographies for hallucinated, retracted, or metadata-mismatched references before publication or submission. Prefer this over a general paper-lookup endpoint when you need batch verification of multiple citations in a single call, retraction status specifically, and mismatch detection across title, author, and year fields simultaneously.

## Known failure modes

- Citation not found in any database — returns not-found verdict rather than an error
- DOI malformed or non-existent — flagged as not-found
- Rate limit or batch size exceeded if more than 20 references submitted
- Ambiguous free-text reference with multiple possible matches — may return low-confidence or no match
- Retraction Watch or OpenAlex temporarily unavailable — partial verdicts returned with source attribution
- Payment failure via x402 protocol — request rejected before processing

## How this service works

Bibliography verification for AI research agents — POST up to 20 citations (DOIs or free-text references) and get a per-reference verdict: exists/not-found, retracted/withdrawn (Crossref + Retraction Watch + OpenAlex), and title/author/year mismatches against a real record. Built for agents auditing LLM-generated bibliographies before a citation ships.

## Output

A per-reference verdict for each submitted citation including: exists/not-found status, retraction or withdrawal flag sourced from Retraction Watch, and detected mismatches between claimed title, author, or year and the actual record found in Crossref or OpenAlex.

## Request schema (JSON Schema)

```json
{
 "type": "object",
 "$schema": "https://json-schema.org/draft/2020-12/schema",
 "required": [
  "input"
 ],
 "properties": {
  "input": {
   "type": "object",
   "required": [
    "type",
    "method"
   ],
   "properties": {
    "type": {
     "type": "string",
     "const": "http"
    },
    "method": {
     "enum": [
      "GET",
      "HEAD",
      "DELETE"
     ],
     "type": "string"
    },
    "queryParams": {
     "type": "object",
     "properties": {
      "citations": {
       "type": "string",
       "description": "Comma-separated DOIs/free-text refs (GET), or JSON array in the body (POST) — up to 20 items. Each item can be a plain string (DOI or a full reference string) or an object {doi, title, authors, year} for stricter mismatch checking."
      }
     }
    }
   },
   "additionalProperties": false
  },
  "output": {
   "type": "object",
   "required": [
    "type"
   ],
   "properties": {
    "type": {
     "type": "string"
    },
    "errors": {
     "type": "object",
     "description": "Documented error responses, keyed by HTTP status code",
     "additionalProperties": {
      "type": "object",
      "required": [
       "description"
      ],
      "properties": {
       "example": {
        "type": "object"
       },
       "description": {
        "type": "string"
       }
      }
     }
    },
    "example": {
     "type": "object"
    }
   }
  }
 }
}
```

## Response schema (JSON Schema)

```json
{
 "type": "json",
 "example": {
  "checked": 3,
  "results": [
   {
    "input": "10.1016/S0140-6736(97)11096-0",
    "verdict": "retracted",
    "confidence": 0.98,
    "retraction": [
     {
      "date": "2010-02-06",
      "type": "retraction",
      "source": "retraction-watch",
      "notice_doi": "10.1016/s0140-6736(10)60175-4"
     }
    ],
    "is_retracted": true
   }
  ],
  "verified": 1,
  "not_found": 1,
  "retracted": 1
 }
}
```

## More

- Live health (JSON, refreshed every minute): https://www.zero.xyz/c/citepulse-reference-checker-6123be6c/health.json
- [Zero catalog index](https://www.zero.xyz/llms.txt)
- [Other services from citepulse.theaslangroupllc.com](https://www.zero.xyz/host/citepulse.theaslangroupllc.com/llms.txt)