Research guide
How to research with AI without fake citations
Start with sources you can open, connect every claim to evidence, and build the bibliography from the sources you actually used.
Write It teamUpdated 4 min read
Use AI to discover possible sources, then open the original material and check that it supports the exact claim you plan to make. Save the source details and evidence before drafting. Build the bibliography from those checked sources instead of asking an assistant to invent references for a finished paragraph.
What counts as a bad AI citation?
| Problem | What you see | What to check |
|---|---|---|
| Invented reference | A plausible title, author, or DOI that does not resolve to the claimed work. | Find the publication on the publisher’s site or an academic index. |
| Real source, wrong claim | The link opens, but the paper does not say what the paragraph says. | Locate the supporting passage, table, or figure in the original. |
| Overstated finding | A limited observation becomes a universal claim or a claim of causation. | Read the methods, participants, limitations, and wording of the conclusion. |
| Incorrect reference details | A real source has the wrong author, date, title, or page number. | Compare the entry with the source itself before formatting it. |
A broken link alone does not prove a work is invented; a page may have moved. Search the title and author, or follow the DOI through the publisher. If you still cannot verify the source, leave it out of the draft until you can.
A source-first workflow in Write It Research
Write It Research combines a research conversation with saved sources and citation tools. You can research in chat; connecting a Google Doc also makes document actions available. These steps describe the extension reviewed September 9, 2026, and the verification habits work with other research assistants too.
Ask a focused question.
Define the topic, population, and outcome. For example: “What evidence compares handwritten and typed notes for college students’ recall?” This is a sample research question, not a claim about which method wins.
Find candidate sources.
Use Research to look for material, choosing an academic source focus when appropriate. Ask for competing findings and limitations as well as sources supporting your initial idea.
Open and read the originals.
Check the publication details, methods, and relevant evidence. If you only have an abstract, keep that limitation in your notes and do not pretend to have read the full paper.
Keep a deliberate source set.
Save the relevant sources and remove unsuitable ones. Research lets you review proposed sources before a document update; inspect that list instead of approving sources just because their titles sound relevant.
Draft from checked evidence.
Connect the intended Doc when you want document actions. Ask for an outline or one section using the sources you kept. Check that the generated sentences stay within what those sources support.
Build and audit the references.
Choose the required citation style and generate the Works Cited or reference list. Match every in-text citation to an entry, remove unused entries, and verify quotations and page numbers yourself.
Keep a claim-to-source table while you read
For the note-taking question, your evidence notes could look like this. These rows are a blank-workflow example; they do not report findings or identify real studies. Fill them with evidence from sources you have opened.
| Planned claim | Record from the source | Decision before drafting |
|---|---|---|
| One note-taking method improved recall in a study. | Exact outcome, comparison, participant group, and table or passage. | State the result only for the studied setting. |
| The difference applies to all students. | Evidence across populations and learning conditions. | Narrow or remove this claim if the evidence does not justify it. |
| A quoted sentence explains the result. | Exact wording, author, publication, and page or section. | Check the quotation against the original and preserve its context. |
A prompt that makes uncertainty visible
Using only the sources I approved, make a claim-to-source table for this outline. For each claim, identify the supporting source and passage, and note any limitation. Mark unsupported claims as “needs evidence.” Do not create authors, dates, quotations, DOIs, or page numbers. Do not draft the paper yet.
A prompt cannot guarantee correctness. Its value is making the answer easier to audit. If a source supports a narrower statement, revise the statement. Do not keep asking for a citation until an assistant produces one that looks convincing.
Do other AI research tools solve this automatically?
Tools can make sources easier to inspect: Perplexity describes inline citations, and Google Docs provides source controls for Gemini. Google also warns that source lists can be incomplete or incorrect. Whichever tool you choose, open the original material before using it as evidence.
Build a paper from sources you checked
Use Write It Research to discover and organize sources, then bring the evidence into your Google Doc with a bibliography you can inspect.