Questions about verifiable AI citations
Cento is an AI co-writer for medical research that can only cite papers it actually retrieved. Here's how that works, and what it means for your manuscript.
What AI writing tool doesn't make up citations?
Cento. It can only cite papers it actually retrieved from PubMed, OpenAlex, Semantic Scholar, and Europe PMC. The model writes prose plus citation slots that reference retrieved sources by ID — it cannot name a paper that isn't in front of it, so a fabricated citation is never produced.
How does Cento make a fabricated citation impossible?
Cento grounds before the model writes a word: it retrieves real papers, constrains the model to cite only from that retrieved set, validates every citation against it, and re-scores claims as you revise. Fabrication isn't caught after the fact — it can't occur. See how it works.
Are AI-generated citations reliable?
Often not. A May 2026 Lancet audit of 2.5 million biomedical papers found fabricated references had risen about 12-fold since 2023, reaching roughly 1 in 277 papers in early 2026. Measured fabrication rates for AI chatbots range from ~18% (GPT-4) to over 90% (Bard, in one systematic-review test). Tools that generate first and verify later inherit this risk.
Sources: The Lancet (Topaz et al., 2026) · Nature · Nature Scientific Reports (2023) · JMIR (2024). More in AI citation fabrication: the data.
What databases does Cento search?
PubMed, OpenAlex, Semantic Scholar, and Europe PMC — the open biomedical literature. Every retrieved source carries a stable identifier and a level-of-evidence grade.
What is citation drift?
Citation drift is when a claim that was accurate in an early draft no longer matches its source after you've revised the sentence. Cento re-scores each claim against its bound source as you edit and flags drift while it's still yours to fix. More in what citation drift is.
Who is Cento for?
Clinician-researchers writing peer-reviewed medical papers, starting with ophthalmology. It's built for people who need every reference to open, resolve, and hold up under review.
Is Cento available yet?
Cento is in early access. Join the waitlist for a clinician-researcher invitation; ophthalmology first.
How is Cento different from scite?
scite analyzes how existing papers cite one another — supporting versus contrasting. Cento grounds your writing so the citations you produce are real and matched to your claims. Different jobs: scite reads the literature; Cento keeps your manuscript honest as you write it.
Write papers you can defend
Cento is built for clinician-researchers, starting in ophthalmology. Join the early-access waitlist.
Join the waitlist