The Scholar Sidekick app lets ChatGPT check whether a citation is real, format any identifier in 10,000+ styles, and flag retractions - each answer rendered as an interactive citation card.
Free, no sign-in or API key. A thin client over the Scholar Sidekick API, built on the OpenAI Apps SDK.
ChatGPT is increasingly where people draft, summarise, and check references - but a language model on its own cannot tell you whether the DOI it just produced points at the paper it claims to. The Scholar Sidekick app closes that gap: it gives ChatGPT a direct line to the real scholarly record, so a claimed citation can be checked against what its identifier actually resolves to, inside the same conversation.
This is a verifier and formatter, not a paper search.The app works from identifiers and claimed citations you already have - it does not discover new literature. Pair it with a literature-search tool for that; use this when the question is “is this citation real?”, “format this in APA”, or “has this been retracted?”
Every answer renders as an interactive citation card - the verdict, the formatted reference, or the retraction status - rather than a wall of text.
DOI, PMID, PMCID, ISBN, ISSN, arXiv id, ADS bibcode, and WHO IRIS URL. A citation with no resolvable identifier is reported as unverifiable rather than guessed at - the app reports its coverage honestly rather than implying a clean bill when an entry could not be checked.
https://scholar-sidekick.com over HTTPS.It is an OpenAI Apps SDK app that lets ChatGPT call Scholar Sidekick directly while you chat. Mention a DOI, PMID, ISBN, arXiv id, or paste a citation, and ChatGPT can verify it, format it, or check its retraction status - showing the answer as an interactive citation card rather than plain text.
Open the Scholar Sidekick app listing in the ChatGPT app directory and enable it, then call it from any conversation - either by asking in natural language ("verify this citation", "format this DOI in APA") or by selecting it from the apps menu. No configuration file and no API key are required.
Yes, it is free, and no API key or Scholar Sidekick account is required. The app uses the anonymous tier of the Scholar Sidekick service over a no-auth connection. A ChatGPT account is needed only because the app runs inside ChatGPT.
Three things: verify whether a claimed citation is real (catching the real-DOI + fabricated-title pattern), format one to five identifiers into a reference in any of 10,000+ citation styles, and check whether a work has been retracted or corrected. It does not search for new papers - it works from identifiers and claimed citations you already have.
It is the same citation engine, surfaced for a different host. The MCP server gives Claude, Cursor, and other MCP clients the full six-tool surface; the ChatGPT App exposes the three highest-value read-only tools (verify, format, retraction) with an interactive citation-card widget built for ChatGPT. Both are backed by the public Scholar Sidekick API.
The app sends only the identifiers and citation text you ask it to check, to scholar-sidekick.com over HTTPS. Inputs are not retained or used for training; see the privacy policy for full disclosure.