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Paid tool · $3 per scan

Citation Gap Analysis

This tool is the reverse of a citation verifier. It finds prior art (earlier published work) that the manuscript should cite and does not. It flags the omissions behind the "you ignored my paper" reviewer complaint before a reviewer raises it.

  1. Pay through Stripe
  2. Upload the manuscript PDF. The link is also emailed, so you can upload from another device
  3. Read the result on the page, or ask to be emailed when it is ready

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Deleted soon after delivery. The result is deleted from our servers 30 minutes after you first open it, or after 24 hours if you never do. If it reads as low-quality, we'll refund the $3.

Sample output

Sample output Show or hide

Citation Gap Analysis

Result: 5 potential gaps flagged. Each entry below is a citation a domain reviewer might expect to see. Verify each suggestion against your own knowledge before adding — AI recall can be wrong.

Meta-analytic evidence on sleep deprivation and cognition

  • Type: Missing Canonical Paper
  • Suggested authors: J. Lim, D. F. Dinges
  • Title hint: A meta-analysis of the impact of short-term sleep deprivation on cognitive variables
  • Verification: Confirmed to exist (CrossRef match) — DOI: 10.1037/a0018883
  • What should be cited: The standard meta-analysis of how short-term sleep loss affects attention, working memory, and other cognitive domains.
  • Why a reviewer would notice: The introduction claims sleep loss "impairs complex reasoning" using only two small studies. A sleep researcher would expect the meta-analysis behind that claim.
  • Section to add it: Introduction

Dose-response effects of partial sleep restriction

  • Type: Missing Prior Finding
  • Suggested authors: H. P. A. Van Dongen, G. Maislin, J. M. Mullington, D. F. Dinges
  • Title hint: The cumulative cost of additional wakefulness: dose-response effects on neurobehavioral functions and sleep physiology from chronic sleep restriction and total sleep deprivation
  • Verification: Confirmed to exist (CrossRef match) — DOI: 10.1093/sleep/26.2.117
  • What should be cited: The controlled study showing that deficits from repeated nights of restricted sleep accumulate over time.
  • Why a reviewer would notice: The limitations paragraph says chronic restriction "may differ" from one night but does not cite the work that measured exactly that difference.
  • Section to add it: Discussion, limitations

Psychomotor Vigilance Task as the manipulation check

  • Type: Missing Framework
  • Suggested authors: D. F. Dinges, J. W. Powell
  • Title hint: Microcomputer analyses of performance on a portable, simple visual RT task during sustained operations
  • Verification: Confirmed to exist (CrossRef match) — DOI: 10.3758/BF03200977
  • What should be cited: The original description of the reaction-time task the manuscript uses to confirm participants were sleep restricted.
  • Why a reviewer would notice: The PVT is used in Section 3.3 without a source for the task or its lapse threshold.
  • Section to add it: Methods, Section 3.3

Origins of defect detection in code inspection

  • Type: Missing Canonical Paper
  • Suggested authors: M. E. Fagan
  • Title hint: Design and code inspections to reduce errors in program development
  • Verification: Confirmed to exist (CrossRef match) — DOI: 10.1147/sj.153.0182
  • What should be cited: The foundational paper on structured code inspection, which introduced defect detection rate as a measure of review effectiveness.
  • Why a reviewer would notice: The dependent variable is defect detection rate, and the related work section starts with modern pull-request review without acknowledging where the measure comes from.
  • Section to add it: Related work

Prior experiments on sleep loss and developer performance

  • Type: Qualitative Gap
  • Suggested authors: (unknown)
  • Title hint: unknown
  • Verification: No searchable title — AI recall only, unverified
  • What should be cited: Earlier controlled experiments that measured programming or software-engineering task performance after a night of sleep deprivation.
  • Why a reviewer would notice: The manuscript describes itself as the first study of sleep and developer performance. A reviewer familiar with this small literature may question that claim.
  • Section to add it: Related work; also soften "first" in the abstract

This is an illustrative example on a fictional manuscript. Your result follows the same format.

What it flags

Each suggestion is tagged with the section it belongs in, why a reviewer would notice the omission, and (when known) the candidate authors and title. Verify every suggestion against your own field knowledge, because AI recall can be wrong.

FAQ

How does this differ from the bibliography validator?
The free BibTeX Validator checks the citations you have for accuracy and existence. This tool finds the citations you do not have but should. The two tools work in opposite directions.
What if it suggests papers that aren't actually relevant?
AI recall is imperfect, so we mark each suggestion as a candidate to verify. If a specific scan is low-quality, email ben@purplelink.llc and we'll refund the $3.
What does Purplelink retain?
Only briefly. The scan result is deleted from our servers 30 minutes after you first open it, or after 24 hours if you never do. The manuscript is sent to Anthropic's Claude API, which retains inputs for 30 days for abuse monitoring, never for training.