Where a CiteRight reference comes from

Input, source and result

DOI: your browser requests the record from Crossref's REST API. CiteRight reads the title, authors, year, journal or book, pages and DOI if the deposited record supplies them.

ISBN: your browser requests an edition record from Open Library's API. The edition matters: an ISBN for a different printing may have a different publisher or year.

PubMed ID: your browser requests the NCBI PubMed summary. It uses the metadata returned for that record; PubMed coverage does not extend to every kind of source.

Website or video link: you enter its title, author or channel, and date. Browsers cannot normally read an unrelated page through this tool, so CiteRight does not invent those fields from its URL.

What to verify before you submit

Compare the title, author order, publication year, edition and page details with the source in your hands. A deposited record can omit or misstate them. Choose the style and local variant your course requires; Harvard is not one universal rule, and Chicago author-date differs from notes and bibliography.

The reference checker treats an identifier lookup and title match as evidence that a record exists. A missing record can mean an unsupported identifier or a temporary provider failure. It cannot verify a source's claims, and the text overlap checker compares only the two texts pasted into it.

Before a release, formatter examples and browser lookup flows are tested. Report a wrong format or missing record through contact, with the DOI, ISBN or PubMed ID and the result you expected.