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Peer Review Was Built for a Different World. Who Checks the Citations Now?

Peer Review Was Built for a Different World. Who Checks the Citations Now?by: Sean HonanPublished on: 19/07/2026

Peer review was built for a world of human-scale citation production. AI has changed that. This article examines the growing gap between citation production and verification—and asks who actually owns the responsibility for checking references.

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Peer Review Was Built for a Different World. Who Checks the Citations Now?

Peer Review Is Not Citation Verification

Peer Review Is Not Citation Verificationby: Sean HonanPublished on: 16/07/2026

Peer review does not guarantee that every citation is real or accurate. This article explains how nonexistent references can survive publication and why authors, editors and publishers need a separate citation-verification step.

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Peer Review Is Not Citation Verification

Fabricated Citations Are Rising. The Fix Starts Before Submission

Fabricated Citations Are Rising. The Fix Starts Before Submissionby: Sean HonanPublished on: 09/07/2026

Fabricated citations are rising in published research. This post explains what the Lancet study found, why manual checking fails, and why citation verification needs to happen before a document leaves your desk.

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Fabricated Citations Are Rising. The Fix Starts Before Submission

A Formatted Citation Can Still Be Fake

A Formatted Citation Can Still Be Fakeby: Sean HonanPublished on: 08/07/2026

A perfectly formatted citation can still be fake. Learn how AI hallucinated references happen, why manual checks miss them, and how Citation Risk verifies source existence and metadata before submission.

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A Formatted Citation Can Still Be Fake