What information do I need to provide for the Citation Editing service?

When booking the Citation Editing service, you’ll be asked to indicate how many sources you have in your reference list. You’ll also need to indicate which reference style you’re using. We provide the service for the styles APA (6th and 7th editions), MLA, Chicago, Vancouver, Harvard, Deutsche Zitierweise, and university-specific guidelines.

Please note that we do not create entire references or apply style guidelines from scratch. Please also make sure that the information you added for your reference is correct. We cannot research each reference list and validate its content; we focus on formatting your reference list and in-text citations according to your selected citation style.

If you only add URLs, for example, we cannot edit it or create a reference entry for you. Rather, please ensure that you have already added the entries so that our experts can make sure it’s consistent and flawless in style.

If your citations are already good to go, and you just want to do a last check, you can also use our AI-powered APA Citation Checker. This tool flags minor mistakes that you can then fix yourself.

Frequently asked questions: Citation Checker landing page

Which languages are supported?: We offer the human Citation Editing service for:

English

German

Dutch

French

The APA Citation Checker tool can check documents in the following languages:

English

German

Dutch

French

Spanish
Which citation styles are supported?: The APA Citation Checker is an AI-based tool that currently supports APA Style 6th edition (2009) and 7th edition (2020). We are working hard to support more citation styles in the future.

Scribbr’s Citation Editing Service is performed by a human citation expert and supports APA 6, APA 7, MLA, Chicago, Vancouver, Harvard, Deutsche Zitierweise, and university-specific guidelines. Unfortunately, due to their complexity, we cannot check law-based reference styles.

If you have your own version of any of the above styles (for example, a specific Harvard guideline), please select “own guidelines” and upload your manual during the upload process.
What does the Citation Editing service include?: When performing the Citation Editing service, your Scribbr expert will:

Ensure that your chosen citation style is applied consistently

Ensure that punctuation and capitalization, as well as the use of “et al.,” are correct

Check for any inconsistencies between your in-text citations and your list of references

Find missing information in certain cases (e.g., when the publisher of a book is missing from a reference list entry)

Add missing authors should “et al.” be used incorrectly (if your document provides enough information about a given source to allow your expert to research it)

Check the layout and consistency of your reference list

Flag reference list entries that seem incomplete (in the event that there is not enough information to research the sources in question)

The Citation Editing service does not include the following:

Creating a reference list from scratch

Creating references for website URLs

Conducting research to find missing information when all or most of the sources in a text are incomplete

Checking whether the information that is already included in a text is correct (e.g., the spellings of authors’ names, dates of publication, titles, etc.)

Providing feedback on the quality and/or relevance of sources

Providing feedback on the number of citations provided

Editing or formatting quotations

Adjusting the formatting of in-text citations (e.g., converting in-text references to footnotes)

Converting existing references into a different citation style

Adding missing sources to the reference list
I am missing information in my reference list. Can Scribbr make sure all required information is present?: This will depend on the type of missing information. For example, a book reference always contains the author’s name, the title, the year of publication, and the publisher. If one of these crucial details is missing, your citation expert will research the information and add it wherever possible.

Your citation expert cannot, however, complete your reference list for you. Depending on the missing information, they may ask you to add it yourself. Your expert also cannot verify if the information you provided is correct, as they focus on applying the selected guidelines correctly and consistently.

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How does Scribbr help students graduate?: Our team helps students graduate by offering:

A world-class citation generator

Plagiarism Checker software powered by Turnitin

Innovative Citation Checker software

Professional proofreading services

Over 300 helpful articles about academic writing, citing sources, plagiarism, and more
What type of documents does Scribbr proofread?: Scribbr specializes in editing study-related documents. We proofread:

Essays

Papers

Theses

PhD dissertations

Research proposals

Personal statements

Admission essays

Motivation letters

Reports

Reflection papers

Journal articles

Capstone projects
What plagiarism and AI detection software does Scribbr use?: Scribbr’s Plagiarism Checker is powered by elements of Turnitin’s Similarity Checker, namely the plagiarism detection software and the Internet Archive and Premium Scholarly Publications content databases.

The add-on AI detector is powered by Scribbr’s proprietary software.
Which citation software does Scribbr use?: The Scribbr Citation Generator is developed using the open-source Citation Style Language (CSL) project and Frank Bennett’s citeproc-js. It’s the same technology used by dozens of other popular citation tools, including Mendeley and Zotero.

You can find all the citation styles and locales used in the Scribbr Citation Generator in our publicly accessible repository on Github.