Terms of Service

By accessing or using CheckReference (the “Service”), you agree to these Terms of Service. If you do not agree, do not use the Service. If you use the Service for an organization, you confirm that you have authority to bind that organization.

The Service is operated by Vito, trading as CheckReference.

The Service parses submitted academic references and searches external scholarly records, including Crossref and OpenAlex, plus Semantic Scholar when that optional provider is enabled, for possible matches. It may compare fields such as DOI, title, author, year, and publication venue and return a result such as verified, uncertain, or not found.

The Service verifies references that users already have. It does not write, generate, rewrite, or submit essays, papers, theses, assignments, or other assessed work.

A verification result is informational, probabilistic, and limited by the coverage and quality of external metadata. A “not found”, “possibly fake”, low-confidence, or similar result does not prove that a citation was fabricated. Genuine theses, books, new publications, non-English works, regional journals, and other poorly indexed sources may not appear in the databases searched.

The Service does not determine plagiarism, authorship, intent, academic misconduct, or compliance with a university, journal, employer, or professional rule. It is not a substitute for checking the original publication, DOI resolver, library catalogue, publisher, librarian, editor, supervisor, or institutional process. You are responsible for reviewing the evidence and making your own decision.

You must be legally able to enter into these terms. If an account is available, provide accurate information, keep access credentials secure, and promptly tell us about suspected unauthorized access. You are responsible for activity performed through your account unless applicable law provides otherwise.

You may not use the Service to:

• violate law, privacy, confidentiality, intellectual-property, or contractual rights;
• submit material you are not authorized to transmit to us and external scholarly-data providers;
• generate, promote, conceal, or facilitate fabricated academic work or other academic dishonesty;
• misrepresent a Service result as conclusive proof of fraud or misconduct;
• probe, disrupt, overload, scrape, or bypass security, access controls, usage limits, or billing;
• use automated access except through an API or written permission we expressly provide; or
• resell or commercially exploit the Service except under a written agreement.

You retain any rights you have in text you submit. You grant us a limited, non-exclusive right to transmit, parse, compare, and otherwise process that text only as needed to operate, secure, and support the Service. Citation queries are sent from our server to Crossref, OpenAlex, and, when enabled, Semantic Scholar as explained in thePrivacy Policy.

Paid features, prices, included citation checks, taxes, and purchase terms are shown before checkout. Paddle acts as the merchant of record. By purchasing, you authorize Paddle to charge the amount displayed in its checkout. The packages are one-time purchases and do not renew automatically.

Purchased citation checks are tied to the buyer's account, non-transferable, not redeemable for cash, and may not be exchanged or resold. They are an entitlement to use the citation-verification software, not stored money or a virtual currency.

Refund eligibility is governed by ourRefund Policyand any mandatory consumer rights. We may correct pricing or entitlement errors, but we will not retroactively increase a completed charge without your authorization.

Scholarly databases, DOI resolvers, authentication providers, payment providers, and linked publication pages are independent services. Their coverage, availability, content, and terms are outside our control. We do not endorse every record or linked publication and are not responsible for third-party changes or outages.

Except for your submissions and third-party material, the Service, its software, design, branding, and original content are owned by us or our licensors and are protected by applicable law. These terms give you a limited, revocable, non-transferable right to use the Service; they do not transfer ownership.

We may maintain, change, limit, or discontinue features and may suspend access to protect the Service, comply with law, address non-payment, or respond to a material breach. Where reasonably possible, we will provide notice of changes that materially reduce a paid feature. You may stop using the Service at any time.

To the maximum extent permitted by law, the Service is provided “as is” and “as available”. We do not guarantee that every genuine citation will be found, every fabricated citation will be flagged, metadata will be complete, or the Service will be uninterrupted or error-free. Nothing in these terms excludes a warranty or consumer right that cannot lawfully be excluded.

To the maximum extent permitted by law, we are not liable for indirect, incidental, special, consequential, exemplary, or punitive losses, or for lost grades, opportunities, profits, data, or reputation arising from reliance on a verification result. Our total liability arising from the Service will not exceed the amount you paid for the Service during the 12 months before the event giving rise to the claim. This limitation does not apply where liability cannot lawfully be limited.

Applicable law governs these terms, subject to any mandatory rights available where you live. If one provision is unenforceable, the remaining provisions continue. A failure to enforce a provision is not a waiver. We may update these terms prospectively; the date at the top identifies the current version.

Questions about these terms can be sent to fadedfate54@gmail.com.