Cite anything,
defend everything.
The complete reference for academic citation in 2026. APA, MLA, Chicago, Harvard — plus how to verify your sources are real before your professor catches them.
Every academic paper depends on something most students never get explicit training in: the protocol of citation. Cite well, and your work is anchored in evidence anyone can check. Cite badly, and your bibliography becomes the weakest part of your argument — or, increasingly in 2026, the part that gets you accused of academic misconduct you did not commit.
This guide is the complete reference. It covers the four major citation styles used in higher education today, the decision tree for picking the right one for your discipline, and a deep dive into the new defensive issue that did not exist five years ago: how to verify that the sources in your bibliography actually exist.
If you are here because you have a paper due, jump straight to your style. If you are here because something went wrong — a flagged citation, an integrity meeting, a fabricated reference you didn't realize was fake — the AI citations spoke is where you want to start.
Five complete references
Each spoke is a self-contained guide. Bookmark the one you use most.
APA 7th Edition
The dominant style in psychology, education, social sciences, and most empirical research. Author-year format with clean reference lists.
Harvard
The most widely used style in UK universities and Commonwealth institutions. Many variants — this guide covers what you'll actually be asked for.
MLA 9th Edition
The standard for literature, language, and humanities papers. Author-page in-text citations with works-cited list at the end.
Chicago / Turabian
Two systems in one — Notes-Bibliography for history and humanities, Author-Date for sciences. Both covered in detail.
AI & Citations
The new problem: ChatGPT invents sources. How to spot a hallucinated citation, why it happens, and how to verify every reference before submission.
Document Correction
Not a guide — a tool. Drop your paper in, we verify every citation against CrossRef and OpenAlex, replace any that don't resolve, and send back a defensible bibliography.
Decision tree by discipline
If your professor has not specified a style, default to the convention for your field.
The new problem: hallucinated citations
Every guide you'll read on this site assumes one thing: the sources you are citing actually exist. In 2023, that assumption was safe. In 2026, it isn't.
Large language models like ChatGPT, Claude, and Gemini are statistical text generators. When you ask them for sources, they don't query an academic database — they generate plausible-looking citation strings based on patterns in their training data.
The most well-documented case is Mata v. Avianca. Read the AI & Citations spoke for sanctions, verification, and defensive workflow.
The structural fix is to separate citation from generation. Tools like Papyra's Document Correction retrieve actual records from CrossRef and OpenAlex before any reference enters your draft.
Six principles that hold across every style
The formats differ. The underlying logic doesn't.
1. Every claim has a source
If you are stating something as fact, your reader should be able to verify where it came from.
2. Direct quotes need page numbers
If you are quoting verbatim, the reader needs the exact location.
3. Bibliography matches in-text
Every in-text citation must appear in the reference list. Phantom entries are a red flag.
4. Verify before submitting
Search DOIs and titles. Real sources resolve. Hallucinations don't.
5. Match the field
If your professor uses a particular variant, match theirs.
6. Save your sources
Keep PDFs of every paper you cite. The ability to produce the original on demand ends most disputes.
Want every citation verified before you submit?
Document Correction reads your draft, retrieves real records from CrossRef and OpenAlex for every reference, replaces any that can't be verified, and sends back a defensible bibliography.
See how it works →