Check every citation against your bibliography.
Ibid checks each citation in your manuscript against its reference list, and each entry in the list against the text. It catches the missing reference, the work left over from an earlier draft, the wrong year and the misspelled author, before a reviewer or copyeditor does.
The author’s name is spelled differently in the bibliography.
Citation
a new grid of surveillance (Foucualt 1977, 195).
Bibliography
Foucault, Michel. 1977. Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison. New York: Pantheon.
Suggested fix: “Foucault 1977, 195” · paragraph 5
- ✓ Matched · Scott 1998, 87
- ▲ Year mismatch: cited as 1986, listed as 1984 · Bourdieu
- ▲ Not in bibliography · Tocqueville 1835, 250
- ● Not cited in text · Durkheim 1897
From the sample essay that comes with the app
What it catches
Every citation and every bibliography entry gets a verdict, with the reason and, where there is one, a suggested correction.
Missing references
A work cited in the text or footnotes that has no entry in the bibliography.
Uncited entries
A work in the bibliography that is never cited, perhaps left over from an earlier draft.
Wrong year
Cited as 1986 when the bibliography says 1984; cited as 1859 for an entry listed as 1989 [1859]; or cited as 1922 when the bibliography has 1922a and 1922b.
Wrong author
“Foucualt” for “Foucault”, “Zizek” for “Žižek”, a left-out co-author, co-authors in the wrong order, or “et al.” for a work with two authors.
Ambiguous and out of range
Two works by the same author and year without a/b letters, or page 1425 cited from an article that runs from 1369 to 1401.
A tidy reference list
Duplicate entries, entries out of alphabetical order and entries without a year.
It also notices when a citation is set differently from the rest of the manuscript: “(Scott 1998: 87)” among “(Scott 1998, 87)”, or “&” where the others have “and”.
How it works
One file to choose, then a list of what needs your attention.
Choose your manuscript
A Word document, PDF, Markdown, LaTeX, RTF, OpenDocument or plain text. Citations in the text and in footnotes and endnotes are all read.
Ibid finds the bibliography
A References, Bibliography or Works Cited section is read automatically. You can also add BibTeX, CSL-JSON or RIS files from your reference manager.
Review and fix
Go through what needs attention and copy the suggested citation in one click. Or save a copy of your Word file with a comment on each citation and entry to fix.
Reads manuscripts the way they really are
Author–date styles
APA, Chicago author-date, ASA and Harvard: parenthetical and narrative citations, several works in one parenthesis, and Pandoc and LaTeX citation keys.
Footnotes
Chicago notes and bibliography: full notes, short notes and Ibid. are checked against the bibliography, with a short note used before its full note and an unclear Ibid. pointed out.
Real reference lists
3-em dashes for a repeated author (———. 1990.), original and reprint years, year letters, page ranges and DOIs.
PDFs
Two-column layouts and footnotes, with problems listed by printed page number. Scanned pages are read with the Mac’s own text recognition, on your Mac.
Your reference manager
Check against a BibTeX, CSL-JSON (for example from Zotero) or RIS export, or a separate reference-list document.
Your drafts
Mark a result as reviewed and it stays out of the way next time. Check again after editing to see what’s left.
No AI, nothing uploaded
Ibid reads and compares citations on your Mac, by plain rules. The same manuscript always gives the same result, and every verdict says why. The app has no network access at all.
- No AI and no guessing
- No network connections, ever
- No account, no sign-in
- No analytics, tracking or ads
- Reads only the files you choose
- Sandboxed, native Mac app
Free to try
Ibid is free to download. The free version checks the whole manuscript and shows full results for the first 25 citations and the first 25 bibliography entries. A one-time purchase unlocks the results for all of them, and the exports. No subscription.
The app also comes with a short sample essay, citing Scott, Foucault, Bourdieu and others with a few planted mistakes, so you can see what it does before using it on your own work.
Checking quotations rather than citations? Verbatim checks every quotation in a manuscript against its source.
Requirements
- A Mac with macOS 14 Sonoma or later.
- Your manuscript as a Word (.docx or .doc), PDF, Markdown, LaTeX (.tex), RTF, OpenDocument, HTML or plain-text file.
- A bibliography at the end of the manuscript, or as a BibTeX (.bib), CSL-JSON (.json) or RIS (.ris) file or a separate document.
Questions? See Support & FAQ.
