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    scholar-sidekick-api

    scholar-sidekick-api

    by Mark Lavercombe

    Resolve DOIs and PMIDs into 10,000+ citation styles, export BibTeX, and verify retraction or fabrication status.

    Updated May 2026
    0 installs

    Free

    One-time purchase

    Included in download

    • Downloadable skill package
    • 3 permissions declared
    • Instant install

    Sample Output

    A real example of what this skill produces.

    verdict: mismatch (confidence: high)

    The DOI 10.1038/nphys1170 resolves to "Measured measurement" by Aspelmeyer — not the cited title. This is the real-DOI + invented-title fabrication pattern (Topaz et al., Lancet 2026). The citation is NOT genuine.

    Screenshots

    About This Skill

    Professional Research & Citation Management

    Scholar Sidekick is a robust utility for developers and researchers that bridges the gap between raw scholarly identifiers and publication-ready metadata. Instead of relying on an AI's potentially outdated or hallucinatory memory, this skill connects your agent to a live REST API that resolves DOIs, PMIDs, ISBNs, and arXiv IDs into accurate, formatted citations.

    What it does

    • Precise Formatting: Generates citations in over 10,000 CSL styles (APA, IEEE, Vancouver, Nature, etc.).
    • Bibliography Exports: Converts identifiers into industry-standard formats like BibTeX, RIS, and EndNote.
    • Integrity Checks: Real-time verification of retraction status, expressions of concern, and open-access availability.
    • Fabrication Detection: A specialized verification engine determines if a cited DOI matches its claimed title to catch AI-hallucinated references.

    Why use this skill?

    Prompting an AI to "write a citation" often results in "hallucinated" DOIs or subtly incorrect author lists. This skill serves as a ground-truth validator. It uses standard curl commands to interact with a documented API, requiring no local installations or complex setup. It is the essential tool for building agents that assist with academic writing, literature reviews, or automated bibliography generation.

    Use Cases

    • Format any scholarly identifier into 10,000+ CSL citation styles.
    • Detect fabricated or mismatched citations generated by LLMs.
    • Export batches of DOIs or PMIDs to BibTeX and RIS files.
    • Check if a paper has been retracted or has an expression of concern.
    • Find the best legal Open Access URL for a given DOI.

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    Permissions

    Terminal / Shell
    Network Access
    Write Files

    File Scopes

    *.bib
    *.ris

    Calls the public Scholar Sidekick REST API over HTTPS. Runs curl (Terminal/Shell) to reach scholar-sidekick.com (Network Access); all calls are read-only lookups - no destructive operations. The export step optionally writes a bibliography file to a path you specify (e.g. refs.bib, refs.ris) - the only file write. No API key needed for the free tier; an optional RAPIDAPI_KEY only raises rate limits via the RapidAPI gateway.

    Frequently Asked Questions

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