About Ref-Check

Our purpose

Ref-Check is a UK-based organisation focused on supporting clarity, transparency, and confidence in academic and professional referencing practice.

Why Ref-Check was established

Ref-Check was established in 2025 in response to a growing need for tools that provide reliable, explainable insight into citation and referencing mechanics, without introducing automated judgement or opaque decision-making. From the outset, its development has been shaped by practical experience of teaching, assessment, quality assurance, and information governance within higher education.

Our guiding principles

Our work is guided by a small number of core principles. We believe that technical checks should be deterministic, transparent, and explainable, and that responsibility for interpretation and decision-making should always remain with people, not systems. We are deliberately cautious about the use of generative or probabilistic technologies in assessment-adjacent contexts, and prioritise approaches that can be clearly explained to students, educators, reviewers, and governance stakeholders.

How we work with others

Ref-Check develops tools that are designed to sit alongside existing academic and professional practices, rather than replace them. We work with educators, academic skills teams, institutions, and professional users to ensure our systems support learning, feedback, and quality processes without undermining professional judgement or institutional autonomy.

Data handling and governance

Careful handling of user data is central to how we operate. Ref-Check is designed to minimise data retention, avoid reuse of uploaded content, and support compliance with institutional information-governance expectations. Our technical and governance documentation is intended to be clear, accessible, and usable by those responsible for local assurance processes.

The team behind Ref-Check

Ref-Check is developed and maintained by a small team with experience across education, research, and professional contexts. Responsibility for the platform’s direction, design, and operation is clearly defined, supporting transparency and accountability as the system evolves.

Looking ahead

As Ref-Check grows, we remain committed to building tools that are calm, predictable, and trustworthy - supporting good practice without adding unnecessary complexity or risk.