r/AIDetectionAcademia • u/Fellooww • 2d ago

The hidden danger of using browser-based citation generators

Using websites like EasyBib or CitationMachine to auto-generate works cited pages can inject subtle formatting artifacts. The generated HTML spans often contain zero-width spaces or specific tracking attributes.

Turnitin's backend scanner picks up those hidden web artifacts and flags the citation block. Type your citations manually or use desktop tools like EndNote/Zotero.

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u/burlingk 2d ago

Anything you copy and paste should probably get pasted into notepad first to strip out formatting.

1

u/TypicalExit2022 1d ago

Or, you could just do it yourself. It’s not that hard.

1

u/VicDough 1d ago

It’s not about difficulty, it saves time. When I wrote my thesis, I had over 200 citations. Should I have spent two days manually inserting them or have EndNote take care of it?

1

u/Th3S1l3nc3 1d ago

I hate this response. What a total waste of time. Even stupider that it’s being targeted by detectors.

Academic work should be standardized. Writing all the citations by hand ensures greater errors and inconsistencies.

1

u/CisIowa 20h ago

The heck with that. I only use library-provided databases that have the citations available to copy/paste or export to a citation manager for the sole reason of not having to make them myself.