Does this check Harvard formatting itself?

No. Formatting (punctuation, ordering, in-text matching) is a style-guide job; Cite Them Right or your university's own guidance covers that. This checks something formatting can't: does the source exist, is it current (not retracted), and does it actually support the claim it's cited for.

The existence and retraction checks are free: paste your reference list, no account needed. Claim-by-claim verification (does each citation actually support what you wrote) needs the full document uploaded and a paid plan, since it has to read and compare the source text.

Does this work for other citation styles, not just Harvard?

Yes. The existence and retraction check reads whatever reference list you paste, regardless of style. Harvard and Cite Them Right are called out here because that's what most UK and Irish universities require for MSc dissertations.

Harvard Reference Checker: Verify Every Source Exists

What Cite Them Right checks, and what it can't

Cite Them Right, the edition most UK and Irish universities specify for Harvard referencing, is built to tell you whether your reference list is punctuated, ordered, and matched to your in-text citations correctly. That's a real and necessary check. It was never designed to open your sources and confirm they exist, remain valid, or say what you're citing them for, and it doesn't claim to.

Three things formatting can't catch

The source doesn't exist. AI research tools can generate references that look completely normal, plausible author, journal, and year, and simply aren't real. A formatting pass can't tell the difference, because the format is fine.
The source was retracted. A real, correctly cited paper can have been formally withdrawn since you downloaded it. Retraction notices live in scholarly databases, not on your PDF.
The source doesn't support the claim. The citation is real and properly formatted, and the sentence it's attached to overstates or misstates what the source actually says.

What the free check does

Paste your reference list (Harvard, Cite Them Right or otherwise) into Acurio's quick-check. It checks every reference against Crossref, OpenAlex, and DOAJ for existence, and flags retractions and corrections in the same pass. No account, no upload of your actual dissertation required for this part.

Verifying that each citation actually supports its claim is a deeper check: it needs your full document and source PDFs, since it has to read and compare the real text. That's covered by Acurio's full citation checker, which this page deliberately doesn't restate.

Who this is for

MSc and undergraduate dissertation students working in Harvard, Cite Them Right style, especially with a submission window in the next few weeks, where checking every one of 40-80 references by hand isn't realistic. Also relevant background: our post on the 10-minute integrity check before a UK MSc submission.

Harvard reference checker: does every source in your Cite Them Right list actually exist?