RefRunner

The paper is finished. The references aren't.

Most researchers finish the paper and then lose a day finding, checking, and fixing references, and can still miss critical details. RefRunner finds the references you've omitted, and validates and corrects the ones you have. In minutes it shows you what's right and what needs attention.

Why it exists

RefRunner was built by a PhD who couldn't stand checking references by hand and didn't like the alternative either: a BibTeX database that handled the formatting but still had to be fed, maintained, and checked, and still let a wrong year or a dead DOI through. The formatting was never the hard part. Finding each reference and knowing it was right was.

References are the last task before you submit, so they are done tired and in a hurry. That is how a DOI ends up pointing at the wrong paper, a cited work goes missing from the list, and an AI you asked to tidy the formatting quietly changes an author's name. Those mistakes are the ones a reviewer notices first, and once they find one, they doubt the rest.

How RefRunner helps

  • Validate. Drop in your manuscript. RefRunner matches every in-text citation to a reference and looks each one up at Crossref, OpenAlex, Open Library, the Library of Congress, and ERIC, with a link to the record so you can see for yourself. Retracted papers are flagged.
  • Correct. Missing DOIs are found, wrong ones are flagged, and preprints pick up their volume, pages, and publication year.
  • Find. Cited something but never wrote the reference? Type an author and a word from the title, and the paper appears. Press Enter to add it.
  • Format. Export in APA, MLA, Chicago, Vancouver, IEEE, or any of 10,000+ styles, using the same formatter as Zotero.

There is no AI in the loop and nothing is uploaded. RefRunner runs entirely in your browser and checks your references against the real record, so it cannot invent a source or rewrite a title.

What's at stake

With RefRunner, you get the afternoon back, your preprints are updated, every citation has a verified reference, and the list is in the style the journal asked for. Without it, you are hand-checking every paper and every revision, and one wrong DOI or missing reference is enough to make a reviewer question the rest of your work.

Who built it

RefRunner is built and maintained by Jay Pfaffman and Literate Computing. Jay has a BS in Computer Science and a PhD in Education from Vanderbilt, taught computer science in high schools, and trained teachers at the University of Tennessee to use open source tools in their teaching. He has seen reference lists mangled at every stage of writing, including a respected journal changing author names and titles in proofs. RefRunner is designed to work the way a careful colleague would if they offered to check your references.

Try it on your own paper

Drop in your manuscript, your reference list, or just the citations. No account is needed. A few minutes from now, every reference will be checked, the wrong ones fixed, the missing ones found, and the list ready in the style you need.

Data sources and credits

RefRunner checks references against records that others build and share. Thank you to all of them.

Contact

Questions, feedback, or bug reports are welcome at support@refrunner.com. Read what other people say in our Testimonials category, or report a bug.