AI gave you a paper citation. Does the DOI match the title?

A working DOI is only the first check. Match the title, authors and year, then open the paper to verify the claim.

Treat an AI citation as a lead to investigate. Copy the DOI into a doi.org link, inspect the destination, and compare its bibliographic details with the citation. A real identifier can still point to a different paper.

Try a known lookup

We queried Crossref for DOI 10.1038/s41586-021-03819-2 on October 13, 2026. It returned “Highly accurate protein structure prediction with AlphaFold”; the DOI link also opened the Nature paper. This is a real lookup example, not evidence that a particular chatbot supplied a correct citation.

Compare the fields before reading the claim

Crossref’s public API provides publisher-deposited metadata. Compare the complete title, author list, publication information and DOI. If a title and DOI disagree, do not silently combine them into a citation. Search the publisher’s site for the intended work.

No Crossref result does not settle it

Other DOI registration agencies exist. A failed Crossref lookup alone does not prove that a paper is invented. Check the DOI destination, registration agency and publisher. A temporary network error is also different from a confirmed mismatch.

Finally, check what the paper actually supports

Find the passage, table or result that supports the sentence you want to cite. Separate a study’s own result from a hypothesis or background reference. Metadata can identify a work; it cannot establish that the AI’s summary of that work is right.

Published October 13, 2026. The DOI and metadata were retrieved directly. We did not benchmark chatbot citation accuracy or reproduce the AlphaFold research.

Sources: Crossref · metadata lookup · Crossref · DOI agencies · Nature · example paper.