Everything RefScout checks before you submit
Seven focused tools for the last mile of a CS/ML paper — finding real sources, cleaning up your bibliography and LaTeX, and catching the submission mistakes that get papers desk-rejected. No AI-invented references.
Scout
Multi-source literature search across ten live scholarly databases.
- Searches ten live databases in parallel — Semantic Scholar, OpenAlex, CrossRef, arXiv, Europe PMC, DBLP, DOAJ, HAL, IETF and CORE — and merges the results.
- De-duplicates the same paper found across sources, and shows exactly which databases returned each result.
- Every result is a real record from those databases — Scout never invents references.
- Verify any result's DOI against CrossRef on demand with a per-result Verify button.
- Copy a BibTeX entry for any paper, or save papers to your Library.
Cite
Paste your text, get real candidate sources for each claim, export a .bib.
- Detects the sentences in your text that need citation support.
- Each claim gets real candidate sources from live scholarly databases — topical matches to review, not a guarantee that a source supports a specific claim.
- Export the sources you keep as a .bib file.
- Copy citations in APA, MLA, Chicago, Vancouver, or IEEE format.
BibCheck
Check your .bib and citations against your manuscript and live databases.
- Flags duplicate keys and matching titles, broken cite keys, and missing references.
- Missing/orphan-citation checks against your manuscript text: entries you never cite, and citations with no .bib entry.
- Optional Verify — checks each entry against live scholarly databases (adds ~30 seconds).
- Retraction detection — flags a cited work that CrossRef reports as retracted.
- Free, no sign-up needed — daily limits apply for fair use.
PreSubmit
Venue-compliance and submission-readiness checks for PDF, DOCX, or LaTeX.
- Structural checks — document structure, sections, plus ORCID/DOI sanity checks.
- Anonymity / double-blind heuristics (a heuristic aid, not a compliance guarantee).
- Page and abstract limit checks driven by the selected venue profile.
- Leftover-template-text detection — lorem-ipsum, placeholder author/title, and stray
\todonotes. \ref/\labelintegrity — orphan references and duplicate labels.- NeurIPS-style checklist assistant (opt-in, AI, beta) that cross-checks your answers against the manuscript.
- Venue-specific profiles — IEEE, ACM, NeurIPS, ICML, ACL — or paste a requirements URL or text.
Glossary
Detect LaTeX abbreviations and generate \newacronym + \gls{} output.
- Detects abbreviations in your .tex text and generates
\newacronymdefinitions with\gls{}wrapping. - Optional domain hint (e.g. "wireless communications") to disambiguate expansions.
- Paste an existing glossary file — already-defined abbreviations are skipped.
- Candidate expansions come from academic papers and Wikipedia with source evidence — never fabricated.
- Free, no sign-up needed — daily limits apply for fair use.
DiffChecker
Compare two versions of a LaTeX document side-by-side.
- Side-by-side line-by-line summary: removed, modified, and added lines.
- Word-level highlighting — only the actually changed spans are marked in modified lines, not the whole line.
- Export the modified version as .txt or copy it with Copy modified.
- Free, no sign-up needed.
Library
Save, tag, browse, and export the papers you find — free, but the only tool that needs an account (so your library persists).
- Save papers you find across RefScout with one click.
- Organize with tags, notes, reading status, and ratings.
- Import an existing BibTeX file into your library.
- Export in BibTeX, APA, MLA, Chicago, Vancouver, or IEEE format.
Full Check
Coming soon Free during betaFull Check will run PreSubmit, BibCheck, and Glossary together in a single pass and roll the results up into one submission-readiness score, so you get the whole picture before you submit instead of running each tool separately.
It isn't public yet. When it launches it will be clearly labeled Free during beta — free while we finish it, so nothing ships silently paid.