Citation integrity for higher education

Protect academic integrity at the evidence layer.

Plagiarism tools check whether text is copied. Solas checks whether the evidence is real — verifying that student references exist, are accurate, and actually support the claims they're cited for. Before submission, and without collecting a single student identifier.

See a live dashboard Try it in Moodle
The institutional dashboard
Citation Integrity · Trinity 2026 · all faculties
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Source alignment▲ 13 pts vs last term
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Watch your dashboard fill.

Within the first weeks, your library and academic-integrity teams see verified-citation rates, the most common referencing issues by module, and the first unverifiable or retracted sources flagged — all aggregate, all before submission.

01 — The problem

A polished essay can rest on broken evidence.

References can be fabricated, broken, or mismatched — from AI tools or honest mistakes. The surface looks academic; the evidence underneath may not hold.

"Smith, J. (2021)" DOI not found
02 — Adoption

AI is woven into student research.

Most UK students now use generative AI in their studies. The question is no longer whether they use it — it's whether the evidence in their work is real.

94%of UK undergraduates use generative AI for assessed workHEPI Student Generative AI Survey, 2026
03 — Fabrication

And it invents sources.

Studies suggest around half of AI-generated academic references are fabricated or materially incorrect.

~50%of AI-generated citations are fabricated or contain substantive errorsWalters & Wilder, Scientific Reports, 2023
04 — The gap

And no one checks the evidence.

Plagiarism tools check whether text is copied. Almost nothing checks whether the sources are real, accurate, and correctly used. That is the gap Solas fills.

£0spent by most UK universities on verifying the evidence behind student work
Try it yourself

See Solas working inside a real Moodle.

We've put Solas inside a live Moodle course so you can see exactly what a marker sees. Two essays are already submitted — one with genuine, verifiable references, one with fabricated ones. Open the grading page and watch Solas tell them apart.

Open the live demo course.

Log in as the marker, open "Solas Demo — Citation Integrity", and view the assignment's submissions. Each essay carries a Solas badge: the clean paper scores high and passes; the fabricated one is flagged for review, with a report listing every citation Solas couldn't stand up. You can also sign in as a student and submit your own essay to watch it get scored live.

  • Marker — username marker, password SolasDemo2026! · see the integrity badges and reports
  • Student A — username studentA, password SolasDemo2026! · already submitted a clean essay
  • Student B — username studentB, password SolasDemo2026! · already submitted a fabricated-citation essay
Open the live Moodle demo

Hosted demo — the site may take a few seconds to wake on the first visit.

What citation integrity means.

Checking whether references are complete, accurate, real, traceable, and properly connected to the claims they support. Solas works in three layers: students capture and verify sources as they research, audit the citation structure of a draft before they submit, and give your teams an aggregate, anonymised view of where cohorts struggle.

Spot fabricated and unverifiable references.

Solas checks whether a cited source actually exists — matching title, author, year, DOI, publisher, and URL against trusted databases such as CrossRef, OpenAlex, Google Books, and Unpaywall. References that can't be verified are flagged for review, never auto-accused.

Catch broken citations, not just fake ones.

Most bad references aren't deliberate — a missing author or date, the wrong year, the PDF cited instead of the landing page, a malformed DOI. Solas flags these so students fix them before a marker ever sees them.

Match in-text citations to the reference list.

Every in-text citation should appear in the bibliography, and every bibliography entry should be cited. Solas flags entries that are never used, and in-text citations with no matching reference — instantly.

See the source mix, not a childish score.

Structured signals rather than a single verdict: whether a source is peer-reviewed, government-published, from a recognised publisher, a think tank, news, a blog, a commercial page, or unknown. Transparent indicators staff and students can reason about.

Flag claims the source may not support.

The most advanced check, deliberately cautious: Solas highlights places where a claim may not be backed by the source it cites, and prompts the student to review. It identifies possible mismatches — it never decides whether an argument is correct.

Cohort insight, never surveillance.

Anonymised, module-level patterns — common referencing issues, source-type reliance, verification rates, and improvement between draft and final. It helps libraries and study-skills teams target support, with no student identifiers and no essay content.

Solas ships with Cite Them Right Harvard today, with APA, OSCOLA, MLA and IEEE on the roadmap. It supports student judgement by checking citation quality and source integrity — without writing the essay, grading the argument or replacing academic feedback.

Where Solas fits.

Not a replacement for the tools you already run — the missing layer beneath them. Solas checks the one thing they don't: whether the evidence is real.

vs. Turnitin

Turnitin checks copied text at submission. Solas checks reference accuracy and source verification, formatively, before submission. Not a replacement — the missing layer beneath it.

vs. Zotero & Mendeley

Reference managers store sources. Solas verifies whether those sources are real, accurate, and correctly used — at the point of citing.

vs. Grammarly

Grammarly improves the sentence. Solas verifies the evidence behind it.

vs. citation generators

Generators create a reference from metadata — which can be incomplete or wrong. Solas checks whether that reference can be trusted.

Privacy by architecture, not by promise.

Academic integrity tooling can become surveillance infrastructure very quickly if you're not careful. Solas was designed from day one so that surveillance is structurally impossible, not just policy-prohibited.

The data your institution sees is genuinely aggregate. No student names. No student IDs. No browser fingerprints. No IP addresses. No essay content. Ever.

Read the full privacy whitepaper →

  • No student identifiers, ever.Events arrive with a module code and a verdict type — never a name, ID, or session token.
  • No essay content collected.The audit runs locally on the student's machine. Only the verdict ever crosses the network.
  • UK/EU data residency.Institutional event data is stored in Cloudflare's UK/EU (Western Europe) region. Never replicated outside the UK/EU.
  • GDPR aligned.Lawful basis: legitimate interest (academic integrity). Data Processing Agreement available pre-signature.
  • Student opt-in transparent.Students are told when their institution uses Solas, what's measured, and what isn't. The free tool keeps working either way.

Three steps to deploy.

No software to install. No infrastructure to maintain. Students keep using the same Solas they already have.

1

Sign the licence.

Per-student annual licence keyed to your institution's domain. Standard university procurement, GDPR DPA, security questionnaire — all available pre-signature.

2

Distribute the institutional code.

Your IT department circulates a short institutional code via email or VLE. Students paste it into Solas Settings; their installs upgrade to the institutional build, opt-in to anonymous module-level reporting.

3

Watch your dashboard fill.

Within the first weeks, your library and academic-integrity teams see verified-citation rates, the most common referencing issues by module, and the first unverifiable or retracted sources flagged — aggregate, before submission.

Simple, transparent pricing.

Per-student annual. The same price every university pays. No tier games, no enterprise mark-up.

£6 /student /year

billed annually, capped at your enrolled headcount

Schedule a demo

For comparison: Turnitin licences typically cost UK universities £5–£8 per student per year. Solas adds the layer Turnitin doesn't — verifying that the references behind the work are real, accurate, and correctly used.

See it on real data.

15-minute demo. We'll show the dashboard on synthetic but realistic institutional data, walk through the privacy architecture, and answer whatever your Information Governance team wants to ask.

We only use this address to reply to your demo request. We don't add you to any list.