BibGuard: Bibliography & LaTeX Quality Auditor

• 🎉 BibGuard is now available with a online gradio demo https://huggingface.co/spaces/thinkwee/BibGuard! Try it out! 🎉

BibGuard is your comprehensive quality assurance tool for academic papers. It validates bibliography entries against real-world databases and checks LaTeX submission quality to catch errors before you submit.

AI coding assistants and writing tools often hallucinate plausible-sounding but non-existent references. BibGuard verifies the existence of every entry against multiple databases (arXiv, CrossRef, DBLP, Semantic Scholar, OpenAlex, Google Scholar) and uses advanced LLMs to ensure cited papers actually support your claims.

🛡 Why BibGuard?

• 🚫 Stop Hallucinations: Instantly flag citations that don't exist or have mismatched metadata
• 📋 LaTeX Quality Checks: Detect formatting issues, weak writing patterns, and submission compliance problems
• 🔒 Safe & Non-Destructive: Your original files are never modified - only detailed reports are generated
• 🧠 Contextual Relevance: Ensure cited papers actually discuss what you claim (with LLM)
• ⚡ Efficiency Boost: Drastically reduce time needed to manually verify hundreds of citations

🚀 Features

Bibliography Validation

• 🔍 Multi-Source Verification: Validates metadata against arXiv, CrossRef, DBLP, Semantic Scholar, OpenAlex, and Google Scholar
• 🤖 AI Relevance Check: Uses LLMs to verify citations match their context (optional)
• 📊 Preprint Detection: Warns if >50% of references are preprints (arXiv, bioRxiv, etc.)
• 👀 Usage Analysis: Highlights missing citations and unused bib entries
• 👯 Duplicate Detector: Identifies duplicate entries with fuzzy matching

LaTeX Quality Checks

• 📐 Format Validation: Caption placement, cross-references, citation spacing, equation punctuation
• ✍️ Writing Quality: Weak sentence starters, hedging language, redundant phrases
• 🔤 Consistency: Spelling variants (US/UK English), hyphenation, terminology
• 🤖 AI Artifact Detection: Conversational AI responses, placeholder text, Markdown remnants
• 🔠 Acronym Validation: Ensures acronyms are defined before use (smart matching)
• 🎭 Anonymization: Checks for identity leaks in double-blind submissions
• 📅 Citation Age: Flags references older than 30 years

📦 Installation

git clone [email protected]:thinkwee/BibGuard.git
cd BibGuard
pip install -r requirements.txt

⚡ Quick Start

1. Initialize Configuration

python main.py --init

This creates config.yaml. Edit it to set your file paths. You have two modes:

Option A: Single File Mode

Best for individual papers.

files:
  bib: "paper.bib"
  tex: "paper.tex"
  output_dir: "bibguard_output"

Option B: Directory Scan Mode

Best for large projects or a collection of papers. BibGuard will recursively search for all .tex and .bib files.

files:
  input_dir: "./my_project_dir"
  output_dir: "bibguard_output"

2. Run Full Check

python main.py

Output (in bibguard_output/):

• bibliography_report.md - Bibliography validation results
• latex_quality_report.md - Writing and formatting issues
• line_by_line_report.md - All issues sorted by line number
• *_only_used.bib - Clean bibliography (used entries only)

🛠 Configuration

Edit config.yaml to customize checks:

bibliography:
  check_metadata: true        # Validate against online databases (takes time)
  check_usage: true           # Find unused/missing entries
  check_duplicates: true      # Detect duplicate entries
  check_preprint_ratio: true  # Warn if >50% are preprints
  check_relevance: false      # LLM-based relevance check (requires API key)

submission:
  # Format checks
  caption: true               # Table/figure caption placement
  reference: true             # Cross-reference integrity
  formatting: true            # Citation spacing, blank lines
  equation: true              # Equation punctuation, numbering
  
  # Writing quality
  sentence: true              # Weak starters, hedging language
  consistency: true           # Spelling, hyphenation, terminology
  acronym: true               # Acronym definitions (3+ letters)
  
  # Submission compliance
  ai_artifacts: true          # AI-generated text detection
  anonymization: true         # Double-blind compliance
  citation_quality: true      # Old citations (>30 years)
  number: true                # Percentage formatting

🤖 LLM-Based Relevance Check

To verify citations match their context using AI:

bibliography:
  check_relevance: true

llm:
  backend: "gemini"  # Options: gemini, openai, anthropic, deepseek, ollama, vllm
  api_key: ""        # Or use environment variable (e.g., GEMINI_API_KEY)

Supported Backends:

• Gemini (Google): GEMINI_API_KEY
• OpenAI: OPENAI_API_KEY
• Anthropic: ANTHROPIC_API_KEY
• DeepSeek: DEEPSEEK_API_KEY (recommended for cost/performance)
• Ollama: Local models (no API key needed)
• vLLM: Custom endpoint

Then run:

python main.py

📝 Understanding Reports

Bibliography Report

Shows for each entry:

• ✅ Verified: Metadata matches online databases
• ⚠️ Issues: Mismatches, missing entries, duplicates
• 📊 Statistics: Usage, duplicates, preprint ratio

LaTeX Quality Report

Organized by severity:

• 🔴 Errors: Critical issues (e.g., undefined references)
• 🟡 Warnings: Important issues (e.g., inconsistent spelling)
• 🔵 Suggestions: Style improvements (e.g., weak sentence starters)

Line-by-Line Report

All LaTeX issues sorted by line number for easy fixing.

🧐 Understanding Mismatches

BibGuard is strict, but false positives happen:

1. Year Discrepancy (±1 Year):

   • Reason: Delay between preprint (arXiv) and official publication
   • Action: Verify which version you intend to cite

2. Author List Variations:

   • Reason: Different databases handle large author lists differently
   • Action: Check if primary authors match

3. Venue Name Differences:

   • Reason: Abbreviations vs. full names (e.g., "NeurIPS" vs. "Neural Information Processing Systems")
   • Action: Both are usually correct

4. Non-Academic Sources:

   • Reason: Blogs, documentation not indexed by academic databases
   • Action: Manually verify URL and title

🔧 Advanced Options

python main.py --help              # Show all options
python main.py --list-templates    # List conference templates
python main.py --config my.yaml    # Use custom config file

🤝 Contributing

Contributions welcome! Please open an issue or pull request.

🙏 Acknowledgments

BibGuard uses multiple data sources:

• arXiv API
• CrossRef API
• Semantic Scholar API
• DBLP API
• OpenAlex API
• Google Scholar (via scholarly)

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Made with ❤️ for researchers who care about their submission