CERCA is an open-source research tool that supports the verification of bibliographic references in scientific manuscripts. It extracts references from PDF files and checks their existence and consistency against authoritative metadata sources, producing explainable diagnostics, audit logs, and reproducible reports.
It is intended for:
- Researchers performing final manuscript checks
- Reviewers assessing reference consistency
- Editors supporting editorial quality control
- Meta-research and reproducibility workflows
CERCA is an experimental tool. It does not replace manual verification.
CERCA is a Java desktop application built with JavaFX. To run it, you need
a JRE that includes JavaFX, such as Azul Zulu JRE.
Developed by: Lidiany Cerqueira, PhD
Computer Science Researcher
Features
- Automatic Extraction: Drag-and-drop PDF parsing to extract bibliography sections locally.
- Manual Entry Mode: Paste raw reference lists directly for quick verification without a PDF.
- Multi-Source Verification: Validates citations against Crossref, OpenAlex, and Zenodo metadata.
- Smart Diagnostics: Assigns "Pass", "Check", or "Fail" status with heuristic match scores.
- Privacy-First: 100% local processing; manuscripts are never uploaded to the cloud.
- Audit Trails: Exports verification reports (CSV/TXT) for reproducibility and peer review.
Project Samples
