Validate Bibliography
Cross-reference citations in lecture files against bibliography entries. Two modes:
- Default (structural): missing entries, unused entries, malformed fields, typo candidates.
--semantic: adds citation-drift detection (duplicate entries for the same paper), DOI verification via crossref, and citation-style consistency within each file.
Report saved to quality_reports/bib_audit_[structural|semantic].md.
Mode 1: Structural (default)
Steps
- Read the bibliography file and extract all citation keys.
- Scan lecture files for citation keys:
- .tex: \cite{, \citet{, \citep{, \citeauthor{, \citeyear{, \textcite{, \parencite{ - .qmd / .md: @key, [@key], [@key1; @key2] - Extract all unique citation keys used.
- Cross-reference:
- Missing entries (CRITICAL): cited in lectures, absent from .bib. - Unused entries (informational): in .bib but never cited. - Typo candidates: keys within edit-distance 2 of a .bib key (e.g., Smith2020 vs Smth2020).
- Check entry quality:
- Required fields present (author, title, year, journal/booktitle). - Author field properly formatted. - Year in 1900–current. - No malformed characters / encoding issues. - doi field normalized (no leading https://doi.org/).
- Write report to
quality_reports/bib_audit_structural.md.
Files scanned
Slides/*.tex
Quarto/*.qmd
guide/*.qmd
master_supporting_docs/**/*.texBibliography location
Bibliography_base.bib at repo root by default; override via CLAUDE.md.
Mode 2: Semantic (--semantic)
Everything in Mode 1, plus:
2a. Citation drift detection
Multiple .bib entries describing the same paper under different keys. Symptoms:
Smith2020+Smith2020awith identical DOI or title.CallawaySantAnna2021+CS2021both pointing to the same paper.- Collaborator-merged
.bibfiles.
Detection heuristics (any → FLAG):
| Check | Signal |
|---|---|
| Same DOI across keys | Hard-duplicate (CRITICAL) |
| Same title (case-insensitive, punct-stripped) | Likely duplicate (CRITICAL) |
| Same author+year+journal | Probable duplicate (MEDIUM) |
| Title Jaccard > 0.85 on tokens ≥ 4 chars | Soft-duplicate (LOW) |
For each flagged pair: list both keys, where each is cited, and recommend a canonical key (prefer most-cited, then alphabetically first).
2b. DOI verification (optional; network)
For each entry with a doi, fetch https://api.crossref.org/works/{doi} and compare:
- First-author last name
- Year
- Title (Jaccard > 0.7 on normalized tokens)
- Container-title / journal (exact or abbreviation)
Severity:
- Author or title mismatch → CRITICAL (wrong paper)
- Year mismatch → MEDIUM (preprint vs published, or typo)
- Journal mismatch → LOW (legitimate preprint variants)
Rate limit: cap 50 lookups per run, 0.5s delay between calls. Cache in quality_reports/.doi_cache.json.
Opt-out: --skip-doi for offline or no-WebFetch environments.
2c. Style consistency within each file
For each file, count citation commands (\citet vs \citep vs \cite; @key vs [@key]). FLAG files with mixed styles without an obvious pattern (e.g., 20× \citep and 3× \cite in the same deck). Low-severity.
2d. Cite-claim sanity (flag-only)
Gated behind --cite-claim. For the top-10 most-cited works per file, WebFetch the crossref abstract and surface it beside the in-text context. No auto-judgment — humans decide if the claim matches.
Report structure (quality_reports/bib_audit_semantic.md)
# Bibliography Semantic Audit
**Date:** YYYY-MM-DD
**Bibliography:** Bibliography_base.bib (N entries)
**Files scanned:** [list]
## Summary
| Check | Critical | Medium | Low |
|---|---|---|---|
| Structural | | | |
| Citation drift | | | |
| DOI verification | | | |
| Style consistency | 0 | 0 | |
## Critical Issues
### Duplicate entries
| Keys | Signal | Citations | Recommended canonical |
|---|---|---|---|
### DOI mismatches
| Key | Field | .bib value | crossref value |
|---|---|---|---|
## Medium / Low issues
…
## Next steps
1. Resolve duplicates — pick canonical key, update citations, remove orphans.
2. Fix DOI mismatches — verify paper in crossref or strip the wrong DOI.
3. Review style-consistency notes.Exit behavior
- Structural: exit 0; report enumerates issues.
- Semantic: exit 0 if only LOW findings; exit 1 on any CRITICAL. Usable as a pre-submission gate.
Cross-references
.claude/skills/review-paper/SKILL.md— pair for full pre-submission..claude/skills/audit-reproducibility/SKILL.md— numeric-claims counterpart.
What this skill does NOT do
- Judge whether a citation is used in the right *context* (
--cite-claimsurfaces abstracts but does not judge). - Auto-fix your
.bibfile — all edits are recommendations. - Check non-DOI identifiers (ISBN, arXiv, SSRN) — roadmap.