Reference Hallucination Arena Skill

Evaluate how accurately LLMs recommend real academic references using the OpenJudge RefArenaPipeline:

1. Load queries — from JSON/JSONL dataset
2. Collect responses — BibTeX-formatted references from target models
3. Extract references — parse BibTeX entries from model output
4. Verify references — cross-check against Crossref / PubMed / arXiv / DBLP
5. Score & rank — compute verification rate, per-field accuracy, discipline breakdown
6. Generate report — Markdown report + visualization charts

Prerequisites

# Install OpenJudge
pip install py-openjudge

# Extra dependency for ref_hallucination_arena (chart generation)
pip install matplotlib

Gather from user before running

Info	Required?	Notes
Config YAML path	Yes	Defines endpoints, dataset, verification settings
Dataset path	Yes	JSON/JSONL file with queries (can be set in config)
API keys	Yes	Env vars: OPENAI_API_KEY, DASHSCOPE_API_KEY, etc.
CrossRef email	No	Improves API rate limits for verification
PubMed API key	No	Improves PubMed rate limits
Output directory	No	Default: ./evaluation_results/ref_hallucination_arena
Report language	No	"en" (default) or "zh"
Tavily API key	No	Required only if using tool-augmented mode

Quick start

CLI

# Run evaluation with config file
python -m cookbooks.ref_hallucination_arena --config config.yaml --save

# Resume from checkpoint (default behavior)
python -m cookbooks.ref_hallucination_arena --config config.yaml --save

# Start fresh, ignore checkpoint
python -m cookbooks.ref_hallucination_arena --config config.yaml --fresh --save

# Override output directory
python -m cookbooks.ref_hallucination_arena --config config.yaml \
  --output_dir ./my_results --save

Python API

import asyncio
from cookbooks.ref_hallucination_arena.pipeline import RefArenaPipeline

async def main():
    pipeline = RefArenaPipeline.from_config("config.yaml")
    result = await pipeline.evaluate()

    for rank, (model, score) in enumerate(result.rankings, 1):
        print(f"{rank}. {model}: {score:.1%}")

asyncio.run(main())

CLI options

Flag	Default	Description
--config	—	Path to YAML configuration file (required)
--output_dir	config value	Override output directory
--save	False	Save results to file
--fresh	False	Start fresh, ignore checkpoint

Minimal config file

task:
  description: "Evaluate LLM reference recommendation capabilities"

dataset:
  path: "./data/queries.json"

target_endpoints:
  model_a:
    base_url: "https://api.openai.com/v1"
    api_key: "${OPENAI_API_KEY}"
    model: "gpt-4"
    system_prompt: "You are an academic literature recommendation expert. Recommend {num_refs} real papers in BibTeX format. Only recommend papers you are confident actually exist."

  model_b:
    base_url: "https://dashscope.aliyuncs.com/compatible-mode/v1"
    api_key: "${DASHSCOPE_API_KEY}"
    model: "qwen3-max"
    system_prompt: "You are an academic literature recommendation expert. Recommend {num_refs} real papers in BibTeX format. Only recommend papers you are confident actually exist."

Full config reference

task

Field	Required	Description
description	Yes	Evaluation task description
scenario	No	Usage scenario

dataset

Field	Default	Description
path	—	Path to JSON/JSONL dataset file (required)
shuffle	false	Shuffle queries before evaluation
max_queries	null	Max queries to use (null = all)

target_endpoints.\<name>

Field	Default	Description
base_url	—	API base URL (required)
api_key	—	API key, supports ${ENV_VAR} (required)
model	—	Model name (required)
system_prompt	built-in	System prompt; use {num_refs} placeholder
max_concurrency	5	Max concurrent requests for this endpoint
extra_params	—	Extra API request params (e.g. temperature)
tool_config.enabled	false	Enable ReAct agent with Tavily web search
tool_config.tavily_api_key	env var	Tavily API key
tool_config.max_iterations	10	Max ReAct iterations (1–30)
tool_config.search_depth	"advanced"	"basic" or "advanced"

verification

Field	Default	Description
crossref_mailto	—	Email for Crossref polite pool
pubmed_api_key	—	PubMed API key
max_workers	10	Concurrent verification threads (1–50)
timeout	30	Per-request timeout in seconds
verified_threshold	0.7	Min composite score to count as VERIFIED

evaluation

Field	Default	Description
timeout	120	Model API request timeout in seconds
retry_times	3	Number of retry attempts

output

Field	Default	Description
output_dir	./evaluation_results/ref_hallucination_arena	Output directory
save_queries	true	Save loaded queries
save_responses	true	Save model responses
save_details	true	Save verification details

report

Field	Default	Description
enabled	true	Enable report generation
language	"zh"	Report language: "zh" or "en"
include_examples	3	Examples per section (1–10)
chart.enabled	true	Generate charts
chart.orientation	"vertical"	"horizontal" or "vertical"
chart.show_values	true	Show values on bars
chart.highlight_best	true	Highlight best model

Dataset format

Each query in the JSON/JSONL dataset:

{
  "query": "Please recommend papers on Transformer architectures for NLP.",
  "discipline": "computer_science",
  "num_refs": 5,
  "language": "en",
  "year_constraint": {"min_year": 2020}
}

Field	Required	Description
query	Yes	Prompt for reference recommendation
discipline	No	computer_science, biomedical, physics, chemistry, social_science, interdisciplinary, other
num_refs	No	Expected number of references (default: 5)
language	No	"zh" or "en" (default: "zh")
year_constraint	No	{"exact": 2023}, {"min_year": 2020}, {"max_year": 2015}, or {"min_year": 2020, "max_year": 2024}

Official dataset: OpenJudge/ref-hallucination-arena

Interpreting results

Overall accuracy (verification rate):

• > 75% — Excellent: model rarely hallucinates references
• 60–75% — Good: most references are real, some fabrication
• 40–60% — Fair: significant hallucination, use with caution
• < 40% — Poor: model frequently fabricates references

Per-field accuracy:

• title_accuracy — % of titles matching real papers
• author_accuracy — % of correct author lists
• year_accuracy — % of correct publication years
• doi_accuracy — % of valid DOIs

Verification status:

• VERIFIED — title + author + year all exactly match a real paper
• SUSPECT — partial match (e.g. title matches but authors differ)
• NOT_FOUND — no match in any database
• ERROR — API timeout or network failure

Ranking order: overall accuracy → year compliance rate → avg confidence → completeness

Output files

evaluation_results/ref_hallucination_arena/
├── evaluation_report.md          # Detailed Markdown report
├── evaluation_results.json       # Rankings, per-field accuracy, scores
├── verification_chart.png        # Per-field accuracy bar chart
├── discipline_chart.png          # Per-discipline accuracy chart
├── queries.json                  # Loaded evaluation queries
├── responses.json                # Raw model responses
├── extracted_refs.json           # Extracted BibTeX references
├── verification_results.json     # Per-reference verification details
└── checkpoint.json               # Pipeline checkpoint for resume

API key by model

Model prefix	Environment variable
gpt-*, o1-*, o3-*	OPENAI_API_KEY
claude-*	ANTHROPIC_API_KEY
qwen-*, dashscope/*	DASHSCOPE_API_KEY
deepseek-*	DEEPSEEK_API_KEY
Custom endpoint	set api_key + base_url in config

Additional resources

• Full config examples: cookbooks/ref_hallucination_arena/examples/
• Documentation: docs/validating_graders/ref_hallucination_arena.md
• Official dataset: HuggingFace
• Leaderboard: openjudge.me/leaderboard