Reference Finder
Find published sources that support, challenge or add to a claim in your writing. Every reference is a real database record, and quotes are checked word for word.
Stance is AI-assessed. Always read the source before citing. Relevance and stance notes are written by an AI model, usually from the abstract alone.
What the Reference Finder does
Give it a claim from your essay, report or article, and it searches scholarly databases and book catalogues for published works on that claim. The results are sorted into three columns: sources that support the claim, sources that challenge it, and related sources that suggest another angle.
Every title, author, year and link on a card comes from a database record, never from the AI model. The model only reads the abstracts or snippets of the works that were found and gives its view of how each one relates to your claim.
How it works
Enter a claim
Type one claim of up to 300 characters, or paste a paragraph and let the tool pick out the claims in it. You choose which ones to look up, up to 5 at a time.
Narrow the search
Optionally set a range of publication years, choose articles or books, or keep only open-access sources.
Read, then cite
Open each source and read it. When you are sure it says what you need, copy the citation in your style or save it to your library.
Quotes are checked word for word
When the model offers a quote, we compare it with the abstract or snippet it claims to come from. Only a quote found there word for word is shown as a quote. If the check fails, or there was nothing suitable to quote, the card says "Topic-level match (no verbatim quote)" instead.
Deep dive goes further for open-access works: it reads the full text and returns passages, with PDF page numbers where the document is a PDF, checked in the same way. A PDF page number is the position of the page in the file, which can differ from the number printed on it. If no open-access copy can be found, it tells you so and links to the source page.
Honest limits
Whether a source supports or challenges your claim is an AI assessment, usually made from the abstract alone. It can be wrong: an abstract may not reflect the full paper, and a model can misread it. Read the source before you cite it.
A search can miss relevant work, and database records are sometimes incomplete, for example missing volume or page numbers. Check every citation against the source and your style guide. This tool helps you find reading; it does not check facts or replace your own judgement.
Frequently asked questions
Is the Reference Finder free?
Yes, you can try it without an account. Guests can look up 1 claim a day. Signing in with your email gives you more claims every day, a library for saved sources and 1 full-text deep dive a day. See Pricing for the current limits.
Are the references real?
Yes. Every card is built from a record returned by a scholarly database or book catalogue, such as OpenAlex, Crossref, Semantic Scholar, Open Library or Google Books. The AI model cannot add a work that the search did not return. Records can still contain errors, so check the details against the source.
Can I trust the Support and Counter labels?
Treat them as a first sorting, not a verdict. The labels are an AI assessment, usually based on the abstract. Open the source and read the relevant part before you rely on it.
What does "Topic-level match" mean?
It means the work is about the topic of your claim, but no passage from its abstract or snippet could be confirmed word for word. No quote is shown, because we only show quotes that pass that check.
Which citation styles are available?
APA 7th, MLA 9th, Chicago (author-date), Harvard (Cite Them Right), IEEE. Citations are formatted in your browser from the database record, using styles from the Citation Style Language project.
What is sent to other services?
Search terms based on your claim are sent to the databases listed above, and your claim and the abstracts that were found are sent to the AI model provider. Our Privacy Policy explains what we store and for how long.
Citation styles (APA 7th, MLA 9th, Chicago (author-date), Harvard (Cite Them Right), IEEE) are from the Citation Style Language project, used unmodified under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 licence.