harcx 0.1.1

Verify .bib file citations against academic databases (Semantic Scholar, DBLP, Open Library)

HaRC - Hallucinated Reference Checker

Verify BibTeX citations against academic databases. Catches fake, misspelled, or incorrect references in your .bib files.

Supports:

• Papers: Semantic Scholar + DBLP (with DOI/arXiv ID lookup)
• Books: Open Library (with ISBN lookup)
• URLs: Reachability and title verification

Installation

# Using uv (recommended)
uv add harcx

# Using pip
pip install harcx

CLI Usage

# Check a .bib file
harcx references.bib

# Quiet mode (suppress progress output)
harcx references.bib -q

# Also check URL citations
harcx references.bib --check-urls

# Custom author match threshold (default: 0.6)
harcx references.bib --threshold 0.7

# With Semantic Scholar API key (for higher rate limits)
harcx references.bib --api-key YOUR_API_KEY

Example Output

Parsed 50 entries from references.bib
[1/50] Checking (article): smith2023
    Trying arXiv ID: 2301.12345
  Found (author match: 1.00)
[2/50] Checking (book): goodfellow2016deep
    Trying Open Library title search
  Found (author match: 0.75)
[3/50] Checking (article): fake2023
    Trying Semantic Scholar title search
    Trying DBLP title search
  ISSUE: Not found in Semantic Scholar or DBLP

============================================================
Found 1 entries requiring attention:
============================================================

[fake2023]
  Title: This Paper Does Not Exist
  Bib Authors: fake fakerson
  Year: 2023
  Issue: Not found in Semantic Scholar or DBLP

Python API

from reference_checker import check_citations, check_web_citations

# Check citations - returns entries that weren't verified
issues = check_citations("references.bib")

for result in issues:
    print(f"{result.entry.key}: {result.message}")

# Check URL citations
url_issues = check_web_citations("references.bib")

for result in url_issues:
    print(f"{result.entry.key}: {result.url} - {result.message}")

API Reference

def check_citations(
    bib_file: str,
    author_threshold: float = 0.6,
    year_tolerance: int = 1,
    api_key: str | None = None,
    verbose: bool = False,
) -> list[CheckResult]

def check_web_citations(
    bib_file: str,
    title_threshold: float = 0.6,
    verbose: bool = False,
) -> list[WebCheckResult]

How It Works

1. Parse - Reads .bib file and extracts entries
2. Lookup - Tries DOI → arXiv ID → title search (papers) or ISBN → title search (books)
3. Match - Compares authors using fuzzy matching
4. Report - Returns entries that couldn't be verified

A citation is verified when:

• Found in a database (Semantic Scholar, DBLP, or Open Library)
• Author match score ≥ threshold (default: 60%)
• Year matches within tolerance (default: ±1 year)

Development

git clone https://github.com/YOUR_USERNAME/HaRC.git
cd HaRC
uv sync --all-extras
uv run pytest tests/ -v

License

MIT