Introduction¶

When writing papers, organizing literature, or performing agent tasks, you often encounter a problem: the reference list may look complete, but the author, year, volume, pages, and DOI might be incorrect. Manually checking Crossref, OpenAlex, and arXiv one by one can be tedious. DeepSeek Harness’s plugin ecosystem allows tools to be integrated into sessions, and dsh-reference-checker is one such reference checking tool designed for DSH.

It provides the DSH model tool reference_checker, which can check papers or pasted reference lists against Crossref, OpenAlex, and arXiv one by one, and generate corrected references rewritten in the input style.

What is this¶

dsh-reference-checker is a DeepSeek Harness plugin, available at repository Yu-tao-Li/dsh-reference-checker with an MIT license. It solves the problem of quickly checking a batch of references in a DSH session to see if corresponding records can be found in public bibliographic data sources, and providing corrected references for replacement.

Input can be file paths for .pdf, .bib, .tex, .txt, or .md files, or pasted text. The plugin reads the given files, queries Crossref, OpenAlex, and arXiv, provides a judgment for each reference, and generates corrected references. The runtime environment requires Node >= 22, is cross-platform, and has no native dependencies; the only runtime dependency is pdf-parse (MIT).

Core Features¶

• Provides the DSH model tool reference_checker.
• Supports .pdf / .bib / .tex / .txt / .md file paths or pasted text as input.
• Concurrently queries the three bibliographic data sources: Crossref, OpenAlex, and arXiv.
• Provides a judgment of found, partial, not_found, or error for each reference.
• Generates corrected references in the input style, supporting APA, GB/T 7714, IEEE, Vancouver, MLA, Chicago, Harvard, ACS, and BibTeX.
• Checks the first 50 by default, with a hard limit of 200; when exceeding the limit, marks truncated in the results.
• The plugin only reads given files and does not write files; network access is restricted to the APIs of Crossref, OpenAlex, and arXiv.

Installation and Usage¶

Installation command:

dsh plugin --profile web add github:Yu-tao-Li/dsh-reference-checker

After installation, restart dsh web or the dsh process. Once restarted, reference_checker is available in all sessions.

Typical Usage¶

You can directly say to the agent:

检查这份论文的参考文献是否真实

Then provide the file. You can also paste the reference list directly.

The tool parameters are as follows:

If the input is a file, the plugin checks based on the reference content within that file; if the input is pasted text, the plugin processes the references from the pasted list one by one.

Use Cases and Notes¶

Suitable for quickly checking references in a DSH session to see if they can be found in Crossref, OpenAlex, or arXiv, or for obtaining corrected references rewritten in the original style.

Precautions:

1. not_found does not mean fabrication. Publications not indexed by Crossref, OpenAlex, or arXiv may not be found; manual verification of the closest records is required.

2. Scanned PDFs (without extractable text layers) will be rejected; you need to use text-based PDFs or paste references directly.

3. The plugin runs with the permissions of the current dsh process; you should check the source code and license before installing. This plugin is licensed under MIT, and the only runtime dependency pdf-parse is also MIT.

4. The plugin only reads given files and does not write any files; network access is restricted to the Crossref, OpenAlex, and arXiv APIs.

5. It checks 50 items by default; please limit batch usage and do not run loops repeatedly.

Conclusion¶

The value of dsh-reference-checker lies in integrating mechanical steps like “checking references one by one, verifying records, and rewriting by style” into DSH sessions. It is suitable for scenarios where quick verification of references is needed during the writing or proofreading process.

GitHub repository: https://github.com/Yu-tao-Li/dsh-reference-checker. The entry in the community directory has not been verified in this article; if you need to view the directory, it is recommended to refer to the repository README.