This site uses cookies for analytics and ad conversion tracking. No personal data is sold or shared. Do you consent?

RefRunner
File
APA 7

👋 Use it now. Check or . No login required.

Validate, correct, and find academic references

The paper is finished. The references aren't.

Every DOI still has to be checked. Every preprint updated. Every citation without a reference tracked down, and the whole list has to match the journal's bizarre style. By hand, that is an afternoon.

RefRunner takes minutes, not an afternoon.

“RefRunner saved me 3–4 hours of time and corrected many errors that even the publisher had missed. The results were fantastic.”

— Kevin Leander, Professor, Vanderbilt University

For example: Preprint gets correct year, volume, pages, DOI

Cotton, D. R. E., Cotton, P. A., & Shipway, J. R. (2023). Chatting and cheating: Ensuring academic integrity in the era of ChatGPT. Innovations in Education and Teaching International. Advance online publication.

Cotton, D. R. E., Cotton, P. A., & Shipway, J. R. (2024). Chatting and cheating: Ensuring academic integrity in the era of ChatGPT. Innovations in Education and Teaching International, 61(2), 228–239. https://doi.org/10.1080/14703297.2023.2190148

73% match

No account: 20 references a day. Free account: 50 a day. Paid plan: any paper, any size, 1,000 references a month. See plans

📱 On a phone? Create a free account now and your reference lists will be waiting when you start working on your paper.

And the checking never feels finished.

  • Was that DOI right?

    You copied it from a PDF two years ago. The preprint has since been published, with a volume and page numbers your reference doesn't have.

  • Reviewer 2 noticed.

    One in-text citation has no reference. One reference is never cited. Now the whole list looks careless, and so does the paper.

  • The chatbot “fixed” it.

    Your collaborator let an AI adjust formatting. It changed an author's name and invented a page range. You found out at proofs.

You need every reference checked against the actual record, corrected where it's wrong, found where it's missing, and formatted the way the journal wants. Without doing it by hand.

RefRunner does exactly that.

Validate

Drop in your manuscript.

RefRunner reads your in-text citations and your reference list and matches them up. Every reference is looked up at Crossref, OpenAlex, and the Library of Congress. You see what checks out and what doesn't, with a link to the record so you can see for yourself. Retracted papers are flagged.

Correct

Wrong details get fixed.

Missing DOIs are found and wrong ones flagged. Preprints pick up their volume, pages, and publication year. Then export in APA, MLA, Chicago, or any of 10,000+ styles, using the same formatter as Zotero.

Two more, checked the same way

Ryan & Decci (2000). Self-determination theory and the facilitation of intrinsic motivation, social development, and well-being. American Psychologist, 55(1), 68–78.

Ryan, R. M., & Deci, E. L. (2000). Self-determination theory and the facilitation of intrinsic motivation, social development, and well-being. American Psychologist, 55(1), 68–78. https://doi.org/10.1037/0003-066x.55.1.68

⚠ Needs review67% match

Sweller, J. (1988). Cognitive load during problem solving: Effects on learning.

Sweller, J. (1988). Cognitive load during problem solving: Effects on learning. Cognitive Science, 12(2), 257–285. https://doi.org/10.1016/0364-0213(88)90023–7

69% match

Find

Missing references get found.

Cited something but never wrote the reference? Type an author name and a word from the title, and the paper appears. Press Enter to add it to your list.

No AI. Nothing uploaded. Runs entirely in your browser.

“This is something I have dreamed about FOR YEARS, and this is making my academic/research life infinitely more efficient.”

— Trena Paulus, introducing RefRunner in a grad digital research skills course

What's at stake

With RefRunner

  • Your afternoon back.
  • Preprints updated to the published version.
  • Every citation matched to a reference, every reference verified.
  • A bibliography in exactly the style the journal asked for.

Without it

  • Hours of hand-checking, every paper, every revision.
  • A DOI that sends your reader to the wrong paper.
  • A reviewer who flags one mismatch and doubts the rest.
  • A reference list quietly rewritten by the AI you asked to format it.

Three steps

  1. Drop in your paper

    Word, PDF, BibTeX, or pasted text, with the references in any state. Just in-text citations and no list? That works too.

  2. RefRunner validates, corrects, and finds

    Every reference is checked against the record. Missing DOIs are found, wrong details flagged and fixed, missing references located. You decide what to keep.

  3. Export and submit

    Copy the list in the journal's style, download your document with the references updated, or export BibTeX.

Put your references through RefRunner.

Drop in your paper, your reference list, or just the citations. One click shows you what you've been doing by hand.

No account: 20 references a day. Free account: 50 a day. Paid plan: any paper, any size, 1,000 references a month. See plans

Then you hit submit.

Every reference verified. The preprint updated. The list in the journal's style. The reviewer clicks a DOI and lands on the right paper. You spent the afternoon on the argument, not the bibliography.

RefRunner for: