IEEE Literature Search and Verification

Use this skill to gather and verify literature evidence before writing the Introduction, Related Work, citations, or cover-letter significance claims. It is a search-and-verification skill, not a license to pad references.

Core stance

• Search live for current literature. For "latest", "recent", venue policy, DOI, metadata, or

title verification, use available web/connectors rather than memory.

• Prefer primary sources. Publisher pages, IEEE Xplore, arXiv records, DOI/Crossref pages, and

authors' accepted manuscripts beat blog summaries.

• Verify before formatting. Title, author order, venue, year, volume/issue/pages, DOI, and arXiv

ID must come from a source. Missing fields stay missing.

• Organize by mechanism and gap. Related work should help the paper argue a technical gap, not

become a chronological bibliography.

• Do not overclaim novelty. Search can support "differs from" and "to the best of our checked

sources", but not universal first-ever claims without strong evidence.

When to open extra files

Use ieee-citation after search to format final references, and ieee-writing to turn the related-work map into manuscript prose.

Workflow

1. Extract the search intent: background survey, related-work paragraph, novelty check, DOI

verification, BibTeX export, or citation-gap audit.

1. Build query families: system/task, method, metric, venue, and synonyms/acronyms.
2. Search primary sources and note exact source URLs/DOIs/arXiv IDs. For recent work, include

the date range searched.

1. Screen for relevance: same system model, same metric, same assumption, or same method family.
2. Verify metadata before creating BibTeX or numbered references.
3. Build a related-work matrix: paper -> problem -> method -> limitation -> how the user's work

differs.

1. Return gaps and confidence: what was searched, what remains uncertain, and which claims need

softer language.

Output format

1. Search strategy: query families, venues/sources, date range, inclusion criteria.
2. Verified references: citation-ready metadata with DOI/arXiv/source links and missing fields.
3. Related-work matrix: Paper -> problem/method -> key result -> limitation -> relevance.
4. Citation/BibTeX notes: fields to pass to ieee-citation, including uncertain abbreviations.
5. Novelty and gap note: what can be claimed safely and what needs more evidence.