Here are some common citation element clues and patterns of problems in evidence when students use AI-fabricated citations.

• Pagination, volume and/or issue numbers do not correspond to the actual journal. 

For example, the journal uses continuous pagination throughout an entire volume but the citation lists an article in issue 3 starting on page 5, or the journal publishes 4 issues annually and the citation lists an issue number 5.

• Articles all have generic, single author names, John Smith, Linda Jones, etc.

While certainly some articles are written by single authors with common names, seeing this as a pattern is a clue.

• Links to non-existent web sources and/or DOIs that do not connect to the corresponding articles

Web article URLs do change, but multiple dead links are a warning sign. DOIs (Digital Object Identifiers) are permanent identifiers that do not change. The 10 code is assigned at publication.

If you want to learn more—

Camp, N. T., Bengtson, J. A., & Sandstrom, J. C. (2025). The citation catastrophe: Propagation of AI-generated counterfeit citations in scholarship. The Journal of Academic Librarianship, 51(4), 103065. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.acalib.2025.103065

Walters, W. H., & Wilder, E. I. (2023). Fabrication and errors in the bibliographic citations generated by ChatGPT. Scientific Reports, 13(1), 14045. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-023-41032-5