Citation Hallucination Stop Library

A Python library for filtering academic references to match only in-text citations, eliminating hallucinated or non-cited references.

Features

• Smart Citation Matching: Accurately matches in-text citations to reference entries
• Multiple Citation Formats: Handles (Author, Year), (Author et al., Year), (Author & Author, Year)
• Fuzzy Matching: Supports name variants (Mc/Mac, hyphenated names, accents)
• APA Format Validation: Ensures references follow proper APA formatting
• Detailed Statistics: Provides match/unmatch statistics and reduction percentages
• Format Agnostic: Works with markdown, LaTeX, plain text, and other formats

Installation

pip install citation-hullination-stop

Or install from source:

git clone https://github.com/example/citation-hullination-stop.git
cd citation-hullination-stop
pip install -e .

Quick Start

from citation_hallucination_stop import CitationHallucinationStop

# Initialize the cleaner
cleaner = CitationHallucinationStop()

# Your text content with citations
text_content = """
This is a sample text with citations (Smith, 2021; Johnson et al., 2020).
Another citation here (Brown & Davis, 2019).
"""

# Your reference list
all_references = [
    "Smith, J. (2021). Title of paper. Journal Name.",
    "Johnson, A., Wilson, B., & Lee, C. (2020). Another paper. Journal Name.",
    "Brown, M., & Davis, K. (2019). Third paper. Journal Name.",
    "Uncited, R. (2022). This won't be included. Journal Name."
]

# Clean the references
result = cleaner.clean_references(text_content, all_references)

# Get filtered references
filtered_refs = result['references']
print("Filtered References:")
for ref in filtered_refs:
    print(ref)

# Get statistics
stats = result['statistics']
print(f"\nStatistics:")
print(f"Total citations: {stats['total_citations']}")
print(f"Matched citations: {stats['matched_citations']}")
print(f"References reduced: {stats['reduction_percentage']}%")

API Reference

CitationHallucinationStop Class

__init__(strict_mode=True)

Initialize the citation cleaner.

• strict_mode (bool): If True, only include references with valid APA format

clean_references(text_content, all_references)

Clean references to only include those actually cited in the text.

Parameters:

• text_content (str): Text content with citations
• all_references (List[str]): List of all available references

Returns:

• Dictionary with:
  • references: List of numbered, filtered references
  • unmatched_references: List of matched references (unnumbered)
  • statistics: Dictionary with match statistics
  • match_scores: Dictionary of reference match scores

extract_citations(text)

Extract all parenthetical citations from text.

Parameters:

• text (str): Text content to extract citations from

Returns:

• List of (surname, year) tuples from citations

clean_document(content, reference_section)

Clean a document by replacing the references section with filtered references.

Parameters:

• content (str): Full document content
• reference_section (str): References section to replace

Returns:

• Document with cleaned references

get_unmatched_citations(text_content, all_references)

Get list of citations that couldn't be matched to references.

Parameters:

• text_content (str): Text content with citations
• all_references (List[str]): List of all available references

Returns:

• List of unmatched citation strings

Examples

Basic Usage

from citation_hallucination_stop import CitationHallucinationStop

cleaner = CitationHallucinationStop()
result = cleaner.clean_references(text, references)

Batch Processing

import os
from citation_hallucination_stop import CitationHallucinationStop

cleaner = CitationHallucinationStop()

# Process multiple files
for filename in os.listdir('documents/'):
    if filename.endswith('.md'):
        with open(f'documents/{filename}', 'r') as f:
            content = f.read()
        
        # Extract references section
        parts = content.split('\n## References\n')
        if len(parts) == 2:
            main_content, refs_section = parts
            ref_lines = [line.strip() for line in refs_section.split('\n') 
                        if line.strip() and line.startswith(('1.', '2.', '3.'))]
            
            # Clean references
            result = cleaner.clean_references(content, ref_lines)
            
            # Save cleaned document
            cleaned_content = main_content + '\n\n## References\n\n'
            cleaned_content += '\n'.join(result['references'])
            
            with open(f'cleaned_{filename}', 'w') as f:
                f.write(cleaned_content)

Advanced Configuration

# Use non-strict mode to include references with formatting issues
cleaner = CitationHallucinationStop(strict_mode=False)

# Get detailed statistics
result = cleaner.clean_references(text, references)
stats = result['statistics']

print(f"Reduced references from {stats['total_references']} to {stats['filtered_references']}")
print(f"Match rate: {stats['matched_citations']}/{stats['total_citations']} citations matched")

Citation Formats Supported

The library recognizes these citation formats:

• (Author, Year) - Single author
• (Author & Author, Year) - Two authors
• (Author et al., Year) - Multiple authors
• (Author, Year; Author, Year) - Multiple citations
• (Author, Year, p. 123) - Citations with page numbers

Contributing

Contributions are welcome! Please feel free to submit a Pull Request.

License

This project is licensed under the MIT License - see the LICENSE file for details.

Changelog

v1.0.0

• Initial release
• Core citation matching functionality
• APA format validation
• Fuzzy matching for name variants
• Detailed statistics and reporting