--- name: citation-verifier description: Use when checking manuscript citations, bibliography hygiene, DOI or PMID completeness, placeholder references, or BibTeX consistency before submission or revision. ---

# Citation Verifier

## Overview

Use this skill when citation integrity is the bottleneck. It is narrower and more operational than general writing skills: the goal is to catch unverifiable references, missing identifiers, duplicated BibTeX keys, placeholder citations, and mismatches between local citation artifacts before they become submission problems.

Use this skill together with `scientific-writing` or `submission-audit`, not instead of them.

This is stage one of three. It shows the bibliography is well-formed; it cannot show that the cited papers are real, and it cannot show that a real paper supports the sentence citing it. Hand the surviving entries to `reference-audit-guide` (optional set, installed with `--set all`), which queries CrossRef, Semantic Scholar, arXiv, and PubMed to confirm existence and match metadata, then to `claim-source-verification` for claim-to-evidence support. When `reference-audit-guide` is not installed, say that existence was not machine-verified rather than letting a clean local scan stand in for it. A fabricated citation carrying a well-formed DOI passes this skill and fails the next one.

## When To Use

Use this skill when: - a manuscript is close to submission or resubmission - the bibliography may contain placeholders, guessed entries, or stale metadata - a `.bib` file needs a hygiene pass - the draft mixes DOI, arXiv, PMID, or plain-text references inconsistently - you need to verify that local citation artifacts are ready before manual or online source verification

Do not use this skill for: - generic literature discovery from scratch - full manuscript restructuring - venue formatting that does not depend on citation integrity

## Local First Pass

Start with a local citation scan before any online verification.

The helper script:

```bash python ~/.codex/skills/citation-verifier/scripts/scan_citations.py path/to/file_or_dir [...] # Claude Code (global install): replace ~/.codex/skills with ~/.claude/skills # Claude Code (project-local install): replace ~/.codex/skills with .claude/skills ```

Use it to find: - `[CITATION NEEDED]` or similar placeholders - `PLACEHOLDER_...` citation keys - `TODO: verify` markers - DOI, arXiv, and PMID tokens - LaTeX `\cite{...}` keys - duplicate BibTeX keys inside `.bib` files

Treat imported BibTeX and Google Scholar-style exports as draft metadata, not as verified truth.

## Verification Order

1. Scan the local draft and bibliography artifacts. 2. Remove or flag all placeholder citations. 3. Check BibTeX-key uniqueness and obvious identifier gaps. 4. Normalize metadata fields that are commonly wrong in copied BibTeX: - author list and spelling - year - venue or journal name - volume, issue, pages, or article number - DOI versus preprint identifier 5. For every citation that matters to a scientific claim, verify the paper exists in trusted sources. 6. If a claim depends on a specific result, confirm the cited paper actually supports that claim. For a systematic pass over many such claims, hand off to `claim-source-verification`: existence and metadata checks do not catch a real paper made to carry a conclusion it does not reach. 7. Only then finalize formatting for the venue.

## Severity Grading

When you report field-level mismatches, grade each one so authors fix the dangerous ones first:

- **Critical (must fix)**: wrong or fabricated first author, reversed author order, a DOI that resolves to a different paper, a title whose core terms do not match, or a page range off by five or more. - **Warning (verify)**: volume-year inconsistent with the DOI-registration year, a missing or extra issue number, a missing middle initial, a page range off by one to four, or an ambiguous publisher-name variant. - **Info (note only)**: title case versus sentence case, abbreviated versus full journal name, and punctuation or conjunction differences (`and` versus `&`).

Two checks are easy to miss and worth running explicitly: - **Volume-year versus DOI-year**: a citation whose stated volume-year differs from the year encoded in the DOI or the online-publication date is a common sign of a miscopied entry. - **Author-order reversal**: verify the first author specifically, not just that all names are present; a reversed or shifted author list still passes a set-membership check.

Roll each reference up to one confidence verdict: `verified`, `check_suggested` (has a Warning), `needs_fix` (has a Critical), or `unverifiable` (no source could confirm it).

## Trusted Verification Sources

Prefer this order when moving beyond local scans: - publisher page or DOI resolver - PubMed for biomedical papers - arXiv for preprints - Crossref or Semantic Scholar for metadata cross-checking - Google Scholar only as a fallback discovery aid, not as the sole source of truth

## Common Failure Modes

- writing BibTeX from memory - leaving placeholder citation keys in the draft - assuming an arXiv preprint and published version are interchangeable - citing a paper correctly but using it to support a claim it does not make - letting duplicate BibTeX keys silently overwrite entries - blindly trusting copied Scholar or BibTeX metadata for venue names, pages, years, or DOI fields

## Output Standard

When using this skill, report: - placeholder or unverifiable items - duplicate or suspicious BibTeX keys - missing or inconsistent DOI/arXiv/PMID information - suspicious metadata fields that need manual correction - claims that still need source verification - the minimum safe next step before submission

--- name: citation-verifier description: Use when checking manuscript citations, bibliography hygiene, DOI or PMID completeness, placeholder references, or BibTeX consistency before submission or revision. ---

# Citation Verifier

## Overview

Use this skill when citation integrity is the bottleneck. It is narrower and more operational than general writing skills: the goal is to catch unverifiable references, missing identifiers, duplicated BibTeX keys, placeholder citations, and mismatches between local citation artifacts before they become submission problems.

Use this skill together with `scientific-writing` or `submission-audit`, not instead of them.

This is stage one of three. It shows the bibliography is well-formed; it cannot show that the cited papers are real, and it cannot show that a real paper supports the sentence citing it. Hand the surviving entries to `reference-audit-guide` (optional set, installed with `--set all`), which queries CrossRef, Semantic Scholar, arXiv, and PubMed to confirm existence and match metadata, then to `claim-source-verification` for claim-to-evidence support. When `reference-audit-guide` is not installed, say that existence was not machine-verified rather than letting a clean local scan stand in for it. A fabricated citation carrying a well-formed DOI passes this skill and fails the next one.

## When To Use

Use this skill when: - a manuscript is close to submission or resubmission - the bibliography may contain placeholders, guessed entries, or stale metadata - a `.bib` file needs a hygiene pass - the draft mixes DOI, arXiv, PMID, or plain-text references inconsistently - you need to verify that local citation artifacts are ready before manual or online source verification

Do not use this skill for: - generic literature discovery from scratch - full manuscript restructuring - venue formatting that does not depend on citation integrity

## Local First Pass

Start with a local citation scan before any online verification.

The helper script:

```bash python ~/.codex/skills/citation-verifier/scripts/scan_citations.py path/to/file_or_dir [...] # Claude Code (global install): replace ~/.codex/skills with ~/.claude/skills # Claude Code (project-local install): replace ~/.codex/skills with .claude/skills ```

Use it to find: - `[CITATION NEEDED]` or similar placeholders - `PLACEHOLDER_...` citation keys - `TODO: verify` markers - DOI, arXiv, and PMID tokens - LaTeX `\cite{...}` keys - duplicate BibTeX keys inside `.bib` files

Treat imported BibTeX and Google Scholar-style exports as draft metadata, not as verified truth.

## Verification Order

1. Scan the local draft and bibliography artifacts. 2. Remove or flag all placeholder citations. 3. Check BibTeX-key uniqueness and obvious identifier gaps. 4. Normalize metadata fields that are commonly wrong in copied BibTeX: - author list and spelling - year - venue or journal name - volume, issue, pages, or article number - DOI versus preprint identifier 5. For every citation that matters to a scientific claim, verify the paper exists in trusted sources. 6. If a claim depends on a specific result, confirm the cited paper actually supports that claim. For a systematic pass over many such claims, hand off to `claim-source-verification`: existence and metadata checks do not catch a real paper made to carry a conclusion it does not reach. 7. Only then finalize formatting for the venue.

## Severity Grading

When you report field-level mismatches, grade each one so authors fix the dangerous ones first:

- **Critical (must fix)**: wrong or fabricated first author, reversed author order, a DOI that resolves to a different paper, a title whose core terms do not match, or a page range off by five or more. - **Warning (verify)**: volume-year inconsistent with the DOI-registration year, a missing or extra issue number, a missing middle initial, a page range off by one to four, or an ambiguous publisher-name variant. - **Info (note only)**: title case versus sentence case, abbreviated versus full journal name, and punctuation or conjunction differences (`and` versus `&`).

Two checks are easy to miss and worth running explicitly: - **Volume-year versus DOI-year**: a citation whose stated volume-year differs from the year encoded in the DOI or the online-publication date is a common sign of a miscopied entry. - **Author-order reversal**: verify the first author specifically, not just that all names are present; a reversed or shifted author list still passes a set-membership check.

Roll each reference up to one confidence verdict: `verified`, `check_suggested` (has a Warning), `needs_fix` (has a Critical), or `unverifiable` (no source could confirm it).

## Trusted Verification Sources

Prefer this order when moving beyond local scans: - publisher page or DOI resolver - PubMed for biomedical papers - arXiv for preprints - Crossref or Semantic Scholar for metadata cross-checking - Google Scholar only as a fallback discovery aid, not as the sole source of truth

## Common Failure Modes

- writing BibTeX from memory - leaving placeholder citation keys in the draft - assuming an arXiv preprint and published version are interchangeable - citing a paper correctly but using it to support a claim it does not make - letting duplicate BibTeX keys silently overwrite entries - blindly trusting copied Scholar or BibTeX metadata for venue names, pages, years, or DOI fields

## Output Standard

When using this skill, report: - placeholder or unverifiable items - duplicate or suspicious BibTeX keys - missing or inconsistent DOI/arXiv/PMID information - suspicious metadata fields that need manual correction - claims that still need source verification - the minimum safe next step before submission

--- name: citation-verifier description: Use when checking manuscript citations, bibliography hygiene, DOI or PMID completeness, placeholder references, or BibTeX consistency before submission or revision. ---

# Citation Verifier

## Overview

Use this skill when citation integrity is the bottleneck. It is narrower and more operational than general writing skills: the goal is to catch unverifiable references, missing identifiers, duplicated BibTeX keys, placeholder citations, and mismatches between local citation artifacts before they become submission problems.

Use this skill together with `scientific-writing` or `submission-audit`, not instead of them.

This is stage one of three. It shows the bibliography is well-formed; it cannot show that the cited papers are real, and it cannot show that a real paper supports the sentence citing it. Hand the surviving entries to `reference-audit-guide` (optional set, installed with `--set all`), which queries CrossRef, Semantic Scholar, arXiv, and PubMed to confirm existence and match metadata, then to `claim-source-verification` for claim-to-evidence support. When `reference-audit-guide` is not installed, say that existence was not machine-verified rather than letting a clean local scan stand in for it. A fabricated citation carrying a well-formed DOI passes this skill and fails the next one.

## When To Use

Use this skill when: - a manuscript is close to submission or resubmission - the bibliography may contain placeholders, guessed entries, or stale metadata - a `.bib` file needs a hygiene pass - the draft mixes DOI, arXiv, PMID, or plain-text references inconsistently - you need to verify that local citation artifacts are ready before manual or online source verification

Do not use this skill for: - generic literature discovery from scratch - full manuscript restructuring - venue formatting that does not depend on citation integrity

## Local First Pass

Start with a local citation scan before any online verification.

The helper script:

```bash python ~/.codex/skills/citation-verifier/scripts/scan_citations.py path/to/file_or_dir [...] # Claude Code (global install): replace ~/.codex/skills with ~/.claude/skills # Claude Code (project-local install): replace ~/.codex/skills with .claude/skills ```

Use it to find: - `[CITATION NEEDED]` or similar placeholders - `PLACEHOLDER_...` citation keys - `TODO: verify` markers - DOI, arXiv, and PMID tokens - LaTeX `\cite{...}` keys - duplicate BibTeX keys inside `.bib` files

Treat imported BibTeX and Google Scholar-style exports as draft metadata, not as verified truth.

## Verification Order

1. Scan the local draft and bibliography artifacts. 2. Remove or flag all placeholder citations. 3. Check BibTeX-key uniqueness and obvious identifier gaps. 4. Normalize metadata fields that are commonly wrong in copied BibTeX: - author list and spelling - year - venue or journal name - volume, issue, pages, or article number - DOI versus preprint identifier 5. For every citation that matters to a scientific claim, verify the paper exists in trusted sources. 6. If a claim depends on a specific result, confirm the cited paper actually supports that claim. For a systematic pass over many such claims, hand off to `claim-source-verification`: existence and metadata checks do not catch a real paper made to carry a conclusion it does not reach. 7. Only then finalize formatting for the venue.

## Severity Grading

When you report field-level mismatches, grade each one so authors fix the dangerous ones first:

- **Critical (must fix)**: wrong or fabricated first author, reversed author order, a DOI that resolves to a different paper, a title whose core terms do not match, or a page range off by five or more. - **Warning (verify)**: volume-year inconsistent with the DOI-registration year, a missing or extra issue number, a missing middle initial, a page range off by one to four, or an ambiguous publisher-name variant. - **Info (note only)**: title case versus sentence case, abbreviated versus full journal name, and punctuation or conjunction differences (`and` versus `&`).

Two checks are easy to miss and worth running explicitly: - **Volume-year versus DOI-year**: a citation whose stated volume-year differs from the year encoded in the DOI or the online-publication date is a common sign of a miscopied entry. - **Author-order reversal**: verify the first author specifically, not just that all names are present; a reversed or shifted author list still passes a set-membership check.

Roll each reference up to one confidence verdict: `verified`, `check_suggested` (has a Warning), `needs_fix` (has a Critical), or `unverifiable` (no source could confirm it).

## Trusted Verification Sources

Prefer this order when moving beyond local scans: - publisher page or DOI resolver - PubMed for biomedical papers - arXiv for preprints - Crossref or Semantic Scholar for metadata cross-checking - Google Scholar only as a fallback discovery aid, not as the sole source of truth

## Common Failure Modes

- writing BibTeX from memory - leaving placeholder citation keys in the draft - assuming an arXiv preprint and published version are interchangeable - citing a paper correctly but using it to support a claim it does not make - letting duplicate BibTeX keys silently overwrite entries - blindly trusting copied Scholar or BibTeX metadata for venue names, pages, years, or DOI fields

## Output Standard

When using this skill, report: - placeholder or unverifiable items - duplicate or suspicious BibTeX keys - missing or inconsistent DOI/arXiv/PMID information - suspicious metadata fields that need manual correction - claims that still need source verification - the minimum safe next step before submission

--- name: citation-verifier description: Use when checking manuscript citations, bibliography hygiene, DOI or PMID completeness, placeholder references, or BibTeX consistency before submission or revision. ---

# Citation Verifier

## Overview

Use this skill when citation integrity is the bottleneck. It is narrower and more operational than general writing skills: the goal is to catch unverifiable references, missing identifiers, duplicated BibTeX keys, placeholder citations, and mismatches between local citation artifacts before they become submission problems.

Use this skill together with `scientific-writing` or `submission-audit`, not instead of them.

This is stage one of three. It shows the bibliography is well-formed; it cannot show that the cited papers are real, and it cannot show that a real paper supports the sentence citing it. Hand the surviving entries to `reference-audit-guide` (optional set, installed with `--set all`), which queries CrossRef, Semantic Scholar, arXiv, and PubMed to confirm existence and match metadata, then to `claim-source-verification` for claim-to-evidence support. When `reference-audit-guide` is not installed, say that existence was not machine-verified rather than letting a clean local scan stand in for it. A fabricated citation carrying a well-formed DOI passes this skill and fails the next one.

## When To Use

Use this skill when: - a manuscript is close to submission or resubmission - the bibliography may contain placeholders, guessed entries, or stale metadata - a `.bib` file needs a hygiene pass - the draft mixes DOI, arXiv, PMID, or plain-text references inconsistently - you need to verify that local citation artifacts are ready before manual or online source verification

Do not use this skill for: - generic literature discovery from scratch - full manuscript restructuring - venue formatting that does not depend on citation integrity

## Local First Pass

Start with a local citation scan before any online verification.

The helper script:

```bash python ~/.codex/skills/citation-verifier/scripts/scan_citations.py path/to/file_or_dir [...] # Claude Code (global install): replace ~/.codex/skills with ~/.claude/skills # Claude Code (project-local install): replace ~/.codex/skills with .claude/skills ```

Use it to find: - `[CITATION NEEDED]` or similar placeholders - `PLACEHOLDER_...` citation keys - `TODO: verify` markers - DOI, arXiv, and PMID tokens - LaTeX `\cite{...}` keys - duplicate BibTeX keys inside `.bib` files

Treat imported BibTeX and Google Scholar-style exports as draft metadata, not as verified truth.

## Verification Order

1. Scan the local draft and bibliography artifacts. 2. Remove or flag all placeholder citations. 3. Check BibTeX-key uniqueness and obvious identifier gaps. 4. Normalize metadata fields that are commonly wrong in copied BibTeX: - author list and spelling - year - venue or journal name - volume, issue, pages, or article number - DOI versus preprint identifier 5. For every citation that matters to a scientific claim, verify the paper exists in trusted sources. 6. If a claim depends on a specific result, confirm the cited paper actually supports that claim. For a systematic pass over many such claims, hand off to `claim-source-verification`: existence and metadata checks do not catch a real paper made to carry a conclusion it does not reach. 7. Only then finalize formatting for the venue.

## Severity Grading

When you report field-level mismatches, grade each one so authors fix the dangerous ones first:

- **Critical (must fix)**: wrong or fabricated first author, reversed author order, a DOI that resolves to a different paper, a title whose core terms do not match, or a page range off by five or more. - **Warning (verify)**: volume-year inconsistent with the DOI-registration year, a missing or extra issue number, a missing middle initial, a page range off by one to four, or an ambiguous publisher-name variant. - **Info (note only)**: title case versus sentence case, abbreviated versus full journal name, and punctuation or conjunction differences (`and` versus `&`).

Two checks are easy to miss and worth running explicitly: - **Volume-year versus DOI-year**: a citation whose stated volume-year differs from the year encoded in the DOI or the online-publication date is a common sign of a miscopied entry. - **Author-order reversal**: verify the first author specifically, not just that all names are present; a reversed or shifted author list still passes a set-membership check.

Roll each reference up to one confidence verdict: `verified`, `check_suggested` (has a Warning), `needs_fix` (has a Critical), or `unverifiable` (no source could confirm it).

## Trusted Verification Sources

Prefer this order when moving beyond local scans: - publisher page or DOI resolver - PubMed for biomedical papers - arXiv for preprints - Crossref or Semantic Scholar for metadata cross-checking - Google Scholar only as a fallback discovery aid, not as the sole source of truth

## Common Failure Modes

- writing BibTeX from memory - leaving placeholder citation keys in the draft - assuming an arXiv preprint and published version are interchangeable - citing a paper correctly but using it to support a claim it does not make - letting duplicate BibTeX keys silently overwrite entries - blindly trusting copied Scholar or BibTeX metadata for venue names, pages, years, or DOI fields

## Output Standard

When using this skill, report: - placeholder or unverifiable items - duplicate or suspicious BibTeX keys - missing or inconsistent DOI/arXiv/PMID information - suspicious metadata fields that need manual correction - claims that still need source verification - the minimum safe next step before submission