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Free retraction checker
Paste DOIs or a reference list and see which papers have a retraction, a correction or an expression of concern.
Free: 5 runs a day per IP address, shared across the free tools. No account. Only DOIs are checked; the first 6,000 characters of your input are read.
Input
Results
Press Run to see live results here. See a saved sample result below
How the retraction checker works
- 1
Paste DOIs
Paste DOIs one per line, or a whole reference list. The tool picks out every DOI it can find in the text; references without a DOI are skipped.
- 2
Each DOI is looked up
Every DOI is looked up in Crossref, whose metadata carries the Retraction Watch database, and in OpenAlex, which has its own retraction flag.
- 3
Read the status
Each DOI gets one status: Retracted, Expression of concern, Corrected, No notice or DOI not found. Under it are the notices on record, each with its type, date and DOI.
Sample result from the retraction checker
Saved from a real run of this tool on 13 October 2026, using the example input that is pre-filled above. The lookup took 0.6 seconds in that run. Live results can differ as the databases change.
Example input
10.1016/S0140-6736(97)11096-0 10.1038/nature14539 10.1016/S0140-6736(20)31180-6 10.1126/science.aac4716
The third paper shows why all notices are listed: it received a correction, an expression of concern and a retraction within one week, and the status shows only the most serious of the three.
Saved result
4 DOIs checked: 2 retracted, 0 with an expression of concern, 0 corrected, 2 with no notice, 0 not found.
10.1016/s0140-6736(97)11096-0 · The Lancet · 1998
correction · 2004-03-06 · 10.1016/s0140-6736(04)15715-2
retraction · 2010-02-06 · 10.1016/s0140-6736(10)60175-4
10.1016/s0140-6736(20)31180-6
expression_of_concern · 2020-06-03 · 10.1016/s0140-6736(20)31290-3
correction · 2020-05-30 · 10.1016/s0140-6736(20)31249-6
retraction · 2020-06-05 · 10.1016/s0140-6736(20)31324-6
10.1126/science.aac4716 · Science · 2015
Where the retraction data comes from
The notices come from Crossref. Crossref’s metadata includes the Retraction Watch database as well as the update notices that publishers register themselves.
OpenAlex is checked as a second signal. If only OpenAlex flags a paper and there is no notice in Crossref or Retraction Watch, the result says so and asks you to confirm on the publisher’s page. A DOI that is itself a retraction notice is reported as a notice, not as a retracted paper.
Retraction, expression of concern, correction
A retraction withdraws the paper from the record: its findings should no longer be relied on. An expression of concern is a journal’s warning that a paper is under question, often while an investigation is open. A correction fixes part of a paper that otherwise stands.
A DOI gets one status, in that order of seriousness: a paper with both a correction and a retraction shows as Retracted. All of its notices are still listed underneath, with dates, so you can see the sequence.
What “No notice” does and does not mean
No notice means that, at the time of the check, Crossref had no retraction, correction or expression of concern linked to this DOI and OpenAlex did not flag it. It is not a statement about the quality of the paper, and a notice that has not reached these databases yet will not appear.
Two cases are weaker than they look. A DOI that is not registered with Crossref, such as a DataCite or arXiv DOI, is checked against the OpenAlex flag only, and the result says so. “DOI not found” means the DOI is in neither database, so nothing can be said about it; check it for typos.
Checking references that have no DOI
This tool only checks the DOIs it finds in your text. If your reference list has no DOIs, use the citation checker instead: it finds each paper by title and marks the ones that have been retracted.
FAQ
Related tools
- Free citation checker
Check references by title when they have no DOI, and catch ones that do not exist.
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Look up a journal’s open-access status, DOAJ listing and APC.
- Retraction checks for AI agents
The same lookup as a tool your agent calls on a reference list.
Data sources behind this tool: Retraction Watch data source, Crossref data source. All ScholarMuse web tools
The same check, inside Claude or ChatGPT
Connect ScholarMuse once and your agent can check up to 100 DOIs per call against the same sources while it reviews your draft. Calls from an agent need an account and use credits.