Free In-Text Citation Checker

It reads your whole manuscript, finds every in-text citation — parenthetical like (Smith, 2020), narrative like Smith (2020), and numbered like [1] or [2-4] — and cross-checks them against your reference list. You get two audit findings the usual bibliography check cannot produce: sources cited in the text but missing from the list, and references in the list that are never cited in the text. Each listed reference is also verified against real academic databases.

Paste the entire paper — including the References or Bibliography section — into the checker. CiteMe detects the reference section automatically (headings like References, Bibliography, Works Cited, Referências, Bibliografía, Literaturverzeichnis), separates it from the body, and matches every citation to a listed entry by author surname and year, or by number for numbered styles.

Author-year styles (APA, Harvard, Chicago author-date, author-year ABNT) in parenthetical and narrative form, including "et al.", multi-source citations like (Smith, 2020; Jones, 2019), page locators, and accented or particled surnames. Numbered styles (IEEE, Vancouver, numbered ABNT) with single numbers, lists, and ranges like [1, 3] or [2-5].

Either the source was cited in the text and genuinely never added to the list — the most common cause of desk rejections for citation errors — or the surname/year in the citation does not match the entry as written (a typo, a different year, or a renamed first author). Both cases are worth fixing before submission.

Most style guides — APA and ABNT included — require the reference list to contain exactly the sources cited in the text. Uncited entries usually mean leftover references from earlier drafts. Some fields use a separate "Further reading" section for those; either cite them or move them out of the reference list.

The in-text citation audit itself runs in your browser. What gets sent to CiteMe is the text submitted for database verification — normally just your reference-list section. If no reference-section heading is detected in your paste, the whole text is submitted and checked like a regular reference list. If you start an upgrade mid-session, the submitted text may be stored temporarily so your check can be restored after checkout.