Citation Quick-Check

• Queries OpenAlex — a public, real bibliometric database — directly for your author record and returns the total citations, h-index, and works count it actually reports, not an estimate.
• Runs author disambiguation before showing you a number: if more than one researcher shares your name, you confirm which record is really yours before anything is labeled as your own.
• Shows exactly the same public figures an officer could look up independently, so nothing you cite in a petition can be contradicted by a live check.

Screenshot placeholder: no live capture this pass — see "Reading the result" below for what each field on the result page means, and the report's evidence table for why (this tool's result sits behind a sign-up wall on real OpenAlex data; no screenshot was captured to avoid touching the shared fixture account outside the scope of this content pass).

Citation Quick-Check is the entry point into Merito's citations family. It isn't tied to Case Journey stage in the product's own map, but in practice it comes first: it's the fastest way to know your real citation numbers before deciding whether the deeper, case-linked tools are worth running.

• Before: nothing — no account, no case, and no Case File are required. You can run it from the public /tools/citations page before you've even started a case.
• After: once you know your real numbers, the natural next steps are the Pro citations tools that build on the same OpenAlex author record — Citation Context Analyzer (how your work is actually cited, inside a case) and Citation Lens (which of those citations are truly independent). The result page also cross-links to Radar, for monitoring new media mentions of your work.

• Input: your full name, or an ORCID iD (e.g. 0000-0002-1825-0097) for an exact match.
• Case File prerequisite: none. This tool doesn't read your Case File and isn't attached to a case.
• Account: not required to run the search. An account (free, ~10 seconds to create) is required to reveal the full result — see "Reading the result" below.
• Typical time: under a minute for an ORCID match; a name search adds a short disambiguation step if your name isn't unique in OpenAlex.
• Credit cost: free — 0 credits, no plan required.

• Total citations — the cited-by count OpenAlex reports for your author record, summed across every indexed work.
• h-index — the standard h-index metric, computed by OpenAlex from your works list. Shown as — if OpenAlex hasn't computed one for a thin publication record.
• Total works — every work OpenAlex has indexed under your author profile, not just publications you might personally count.
• Percentile note — the tool deliberately does not show a subfield percentile ranking. OpenAlex doesn't publish one at the author level, and Merito never estimates or invents a figure it can't source.
• Stale-result notice (occasional) — if OpenAlex is temporarily unavailable, you may see your last successful result instead, dated, rather than a hard failure.

• Citation Quick-Check is entirely free and stays free — it's one of the six tools listed on Merito's Free plan (plans.free.features_json), with no credit cost and no time limit on re-running it.
• A 7-day Pro trial (40 credits included, per the current plan config) is what unlocks the next layer: which of your citations are truly independent (not co-authors or your own institution — Citation Context Analyzer and Citation Lens), and un-conflicted expert letter writer candidates (Expert Finder).
• The Pro trial checkout does collect a card up front (it's a standard subscription checkout with a trial period, not a card-free trial) — but cancellation is straightforward: cancel anytime from Settings before the trial ends and you won't be charged. Start your free trial from the billing page once you've seen your Quick-Check numbers.

• Searching a nickname or shortened form of your name instead of your full publishing name. This is the most common cause of zero or wrong matches — search exactly as your name appears on your publications, or use your ORCID iD instead.
• Picking the wrong disambiguation candidate. A common name can pull in a different researcher's entire works and citation history by accident — check the institution and works count shown for each candidate before selecting.
• Giving up after a rate-limit message instead of trying again the next day. The daily limit protects the underlying OpenAlex API from excessive use — it's not a sign anything went wrong with your search.
• Treating "no OpenAlex profile found" as proof you have no citation record at all. OpenAlex is comprehensive but not universal; a genuinely uncommon or very new author profile can occasionally be missing or not yet indexed.
• Re-running the search hoping the full numbers appear without signing up. The reveal wall is separate from the search itself; you need the free account step regardless of how many times you search.