Q. How to determine if a citation is real or ChatGPT generated?

Several methods to determine if a citation exists and is accurate is to:

• Find as much information as possible such as: author(s), editor(s), title of the journal article or book containing the citation, publication date, ISSN, ISBN and pagination.
• Look for clues in the citation – if the citation shows the publication details or ISBN it is likely it is a book. If the citation has a volume and issue number, it is likely a journal article.
• Search the Library’s collection using Library SEARCH and appropriate databases via A-Z databases. Apply different search combinations such as: author and title; author and publication year; author and subject and keyword in the title. This will help locate citations that have errors in them.
• Use Google Scholar to search more broadly for scholarly literature.
• Ask the person who shared the citation with you where it was sourced from and what type of resource (book or journal article) it may be.