Check the APA references in your essay
APA is the most-used citation style in student writing, and it is also the easiest to fake: AI writing tools invent plausible-looking APA references that do not exist. Check My Thesis verifies every APA citation in your essay or paper against Semantic Scholar, OpenAlex, CrossRef, arXiv, and PubMed, then flags any reference it cannot find in a real source.
APA reference
Smith, J. A., & Lee, K. (2021). The effects of sleep on memory. Journal of Cognitive Science, 14(3), 211–229. https://doi.org/10.1037/abc123
Matched in 5 databases
Author, year, and DOI confirmed
Fake reference flagged
No matching paper in any source
Catches fabricated APA citations before your reviewer has to find them.
What goes wrong in APA
The APA errors a reviewer catches first.
American Psychological Association (APA), 7th edition is standard in psychology, education, nursing, and the social sciences. These are the mistakes that turn an honest APA reference list into an integrity problem.
AI-generated APA references with real-looking authors but no matching paper
Wrong publication year or volume number that no reviewer would catch by eye
DOIs that resolve to a different article than the one cited
The fix
Verify every APA reference is real.
Paste your essay or upload the PDF. Check My Thesis reads every APA citation, matches it against five academic databases, and flags anything it cannot confirm, before your reviewer has to.
Recommended
Citation Verifier
Verify every APA reference in your essay against Semantic Scholar, OpenAlex, CrossRef, arXiv, and PubMed.
- Flags fake or AI-hallucinated APA citations
- Catches wrong years, volumes, and DOIs that look correct
- Exports a verified, ready-to-submit reference list
Sentence level
AI Text Detector
Detect AI-generated text in your essay, the source of most fake APA references.
- Sentence-level detection of ChatGPT, Claude, and Gemini
- Highlights only the passages you need to rewrite
- Generates an integrity report you can share
Questions
APA references in your essay.
Will this check APA references in an essay, not just a thesis?
Yes. Paste or upload any document — an essay, term paper, literature review, or full thesis — and every APA reference in it is verified the same way.
Does it detect fake APA citations from ChatGPT?
Yes. AI assistants frequently produce APA references that look correct but cite no real paper. The checker flags any reference that cannot be matched to a real source in five academic databases.
Does it fix my APA formatting?
The checker verifies that each reference points to a real, correctly-described source. For formatting clean-up, export the verified references and run them through the BibTeX cleaner.
Final check
Don’t submit unverified APA references.
Run your essay, paper, or thesis through Check My Thesis before submission and replace guesswork with verifiable evidence.
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