CiteGuard MCP server

CiteGuard

The free, open, OpenAlex-native watchdog for retracted and problematic citations.

CiteGuard tells you — and keeps telling you — when your references, your authors, or your institution's papers cite research the community has flagged as retracted, corrected, or subject to an expression of concern.

It exists because the existing options each fall short: scite is proprietary and paywalled, RetractoBot had to license Scopus (no open citation database existed at the time), and OpenAlex collapses all editorial status into a single is_retracted boolean that can't tell a retraction from a correction — and has produced false positives in the past.

Now that the Retraction Watch dataset is open (via Crossref) and the OpenAlex citation graph is CC0, CiteGuard can do this fully in the open, for free.

Status: early development. Building the MVP. See GOAL.md for the mission and

CLAUDE.md for the build guide.

What it does

status: retracted, corrected, expression of concern, hijacked-journal, or clean.

• Check a reference list. Paste a DOI or upload a .bib file → get a per-reference

OpenAlex / Crossref), an evidence link, a date, and a confidence note. When sources disagree, CiteGuard surfaces the conflict instead of silently guessing.

• Nuanced status, not a boolean. Every flag carries its source (Retraction Watch /

institution's works cites (or becomes) a newly-flagged paper.

• Watch an institution. Point it at a ROR ID → get a digest when any of that

(checkreferences, geteditorialstatus, watchinstitution) for Claude, Cursor, and any MCP-compatible client.

• Use it from an AI agent. An MCP server exposes the same logic as tools

Why it's trustworthy

Integrity tooling can do real harm if it's wrong — a false "retracted" flag damages a real author. CiteGuard is conservative by design: it corroborates before flagging, prefers the documented editorial notice, and marks a work UNKNOWN rather than guess. Every core capability ships with a published eval reporting precision and recall on a gold set.

Who it's for

• Research-integrity officers and journal editors screening submissions
• Academic librarians at OpenAlex-adopting institutions
• Systematic reviewers (one retracted included study can invalidate a review)
• Developers and meta-scientists building on the MCP server
• Authors checking their own bibliography before submission

Architecture

One core, two surfaces.

┌─────────────────────────────┐
   OpenAlex ─────▶                             │
   (CC0 graph)   │   editorial-status model    │──▶  MCP server
                 │   + resolution logic        │      (check_references,
   Retraction ──▶│   (conservative)            │       get_editorial_status,
   Watch (open)  │                             │       watch_institution)
                 │                             │──▶  reference-list checker
   Crossref ─────▶                             │      (DOI / .bib → statuses,
   (DOI norm.)   └─────────────────────────────┘       thin web UI)

Repository layout:

Shortened. The full README is on GitHub.