Find retracted papers in your bibliography
Retracted papers keep being cited for years, usually because the citing authors never heard of the retraction. Checking a long reference list one paper at a time is slow, so it rarely happens before submission.
BibProfile checks every reference in your .bib for retractions, expressions of concern and corrections in one pass.
See it on an example Check your own .bib
The example includes a paper retracted in 2019 (Chaudhary et al. 2017, PLoS Biology).
How to do it with BibProfile
- Open bibprofile.com and drop your
.bibfile, or paste its entries (from Overleaf: open the.bib, select all, copy). Nothing to install, no account. - Each reference is matched to its record, then its DOI is checked with Crossref for retraction, expression-of-concern and correction notices, including the Retraction Watch database, alongside OpenAlex’s own retraction flags.
- Open the “Retractions & corrections” card in the Report: retracted papers first, then expressions of concern, then corrections. The one-page report you can download lists the retracted papers with their retraction notices.
What it can and can’t tell you
- A reference needs a DOI or a match to be checked. References with no retraction data at all are counted and shown as such, never assumed to be clean.
- A retraction listed isn’t always a mistake. You may cite a retracted paper on purpose, for instance to discuss it. In that case, say so in the text and cite the retraction notice too.
- An expression of concern is not a retraction: the editors have doubts and are investigating. A correction usually fixes a detail; it’s worth checking you cite the corrected version.
- The check only knows the notices publishers and Retraction Watch have registered, so a very recent retraction may not appear yet.
Doing it by hand
- If you use Zotero, it warns you about retracted items in your library, using the Retraction Watch data.
- Open each paper’s DOI page: retracted articles usually carry a banner or a “RETRACTED:” prefix in the title.
- Search the paper in the Retraction Watch Database (
retractiondatabase.org).
Each of these works for one paper at a time, or only for references already in your Zotero library.
FAQ
Where does the retraction data come from?
From OpenAlex, which flags retracted works, and from Crossref, which holds the retraction, correction and expression-of-concern notices registered by publishers and includes the Retraction Watch database. BibProfile reports a paper as retracted if any of these sources says so.
Does it check papers without a DOI?
Partly. A reference matched by its title is checked through its matched record and that record’s DOI. A reference that has no DOI and can’t be matched has no retraction data, and BibProfile says so instead of calling it clean.
Is my .bib file uploaded anywhere?
No. The file is read in your browser and is never uploaded. To look a reference up, only its DOI, or its title, first author and year, is sent to Crossref and OpenAlex (through BibProfile’s own proxy, which keeps no record of them). There’s no account, no cookie and no tracking: BibProfile stores nothing about you or your file. Our host, Cloudflare, processes technical data such as your IP address to deliver the site (see the privacy page).
Is it free?
Yes, and there’s no account. Lookups by DOI are free; a title search on OpenAlex uses one credit from a free daily pool provided by OpenAlex and shared by everyone using BibProfile, so you never pay anything. If the pool runs out on a busy day, you can add your own free OpenAlex key or come back after the reset.