A student books a session with a writing tutor, a learning adviser or a librarian, and brings a brief, part of a draft and a reference list. The services' own pages say what such a session covers: the brief, finding sources, referencing, making sense of feedback. Those are the jobs tools for writing tutors can help with. Writing the paper is not one of them.
This guide, published by EdCitation for writing-centre tutors, academic skills advisers, librarians who teach referencing and peer mentors, sets each EdCitation tool against those jobs, with who runs it and what it costs. It also marks the line the services draw, which EdCitation shares: it never writes any part of a paper. Pages cited were read on 23 September 2026.
Everything a tutor would open during a session is free with no account: Check your paper for the brief, Find sources and Cite a source for sources, and Verify references for the list.
What does a tutor need from a tool in a session?
A tutor needs tools that do a session's checking jobs and leave the writing alone: reading the brief, finding and judging sources, citing them, checking a reference list, and reading a report the student brings. The list comes from the services themselves.
What writing centres and skills services cover
Dartmouth College's Writing Center (n.d.) asks students to bring "a copy of the prompt or assignment" with their draft, and names "incorporation of sources" among the things its tutors help improve. Stanford's Hume Center (n.d.) builds its 50-minute appointments on "purposeful conversation" and lists research skills among its topics.
In the UK, the University of Leeds Library (n.d.) offers learning-adviser appointments of up to 45 minutes on academic writing, finding information and critical thinking, and invites students to send the draft, their tutor's feedback and the assessment brief beforehand. The University of Reading Library (n.d.) runs ten-minute drop-ins for questions such as how to reference a particular kind of text, or whether a brief has been understood.
Librarians and peer mentors
Some services split the jobs by role. At the University of Sunderland (2026), academic liaison librarians give appointments on finding resources, and study skills advisers on skills such as being critical and referencing. Reading has ASK Advisers, postgraduate research students trained by its Study Advice team, for questions like how to format a reference for a source only their subject uses.
What the professional frameworks add
The Association for Learning Development in Higher Education (n.d.) places learning developers in "an educational bridging role" between what students bring and the conventions of their subjects; the first of its five values is working in partnership with students and staff. For librarians, the ACRL framework, adopted in 2016, lists the practice to "give credit to the original ideas of others through proper attribution and citation" (Association of College and Research Libraries, 2015). Its frame that authority is constructed and contextual is why judging a source belongs in a session: a source's weight depends on what the paper needs from it.
Which EdCitation tools can writing tutors use, and who runs each?
The first four EdCitation tools need no account and can be opened in the room. Theoretics QA and the four Pro checks read a student's own paper, so the student runs them and brings the result.
| Tool | What it does | Who runs it | Plan and cost |
|---|---|---|---|
| Check your paper | Reads a brief or rubric into rules, each beside its sentence | Tutor or student | Free, no account |
| Find sources | Searches about 300 million published works, by topic or by claim | Student, tutor beside them | Free, no account |
| Cite a source | Builds a reference in six styles from the record, screened for retraction | Student | Free, no account |
| Verify references | A verdict on every reference; retractions flagged; citations matched | Student | Free, no account |
| Theoretics QA | The paper judged against its own instructions, quoted, never rewritten | Student, on their own draft | Max, $24 a month |
| References from a file | Every reference in a Word file or PDF checked; sources suggested for weak ones | Student | Pro, $8 a month, or three checks a month free |
| Mechanics QA | APA 7 formatting, leftovers in the file, citations, numbers, language | Student | Pro, $8 a month, or three checks a month free |
| Check plagiarism | Passages matching published or web text, with each source | Student; only they see it | Pro credits: 240 a month, 720 with Max, more from $10 |
| Check AI | Passages labelled AI-written, AI-assisted or human, with a score | Student; only they see it | Pro, same credits |
| Library | Books by discipline, kind, language and year; My Books | Tutor, librarian or student | Catalogue with an account; reading and borrowing with Max |
| Lists and the Team page | Reference lists and a reading list, shared by email | Tutor shares, students open | Free account |
| Institution licence | Every student covered, LMS and sign-in, white label, training, one invoice | The university | Institution |
"Three checks a month free" means with a free account. A year paid at once saves 25%: Pro is $72 and Max $216 (pricing). Before a credit check runs it shows what it will use, and if it fails it uses none.
How does each tool fit the jobs of a session?
Each job has one tool for its checking part; the teaching stays with the tutor.
Reading the brief
Check your paper takes the brief, the rubric or both and lists the rules: word limits for each part, required headings, how many sources and how recent, the citation style, font, spacing and margins. Each rule sits beside the sentence it came from, and a misread one can be unticked. Those sentences are teaching material: ask the student to read each aloud and say what it asks. Feedback against the brief builds a thirty-minute session on that list; checking against the marking rubric does it with a rubric.
Finding and judging sources
Find sources searches about 300 million published works by topic or by the claim a sentence needs to support, with filters for kind of source, years and open access. Searching by claim suits a session: the student types the sentence that needs support, and you look together at what the record holds. The judging stays with you both: what kind of source is each result, and does it meet the brief's rules on number and recency?
Citing a source
Cite a source builds the reference from a DOI, title, PubMed ID, ISBN or web address in APA 7, MLA 9, Chicago 18 (author-date), Harvard, IEEE or Vancouver. For a web page, the details read from the page can be corrected before the entry is built, which is a moment to teach: ask who the author is and which date counts, and let the student change the field. The APA and Harvard pages cover each style.
Checking a reference list
Verify references is the reference checker for this job: each entry comes back verified, doubtful (shown as "check this") or not found, retracted papers are flagged, and an index that does not answer is reported as could not check, never as not found. With the whole paper uploaded, every citation is matched to the list and back (citations that do not match the list). References from a file, in Pro, says where each mismatch sits and recommends published sources for a reference that cannot stand (checking every reference from the file; replacing a weak source).
Reading a report the student brings
A report is feedback of a kind, and Leeds already invites students to send their feedback before an appointment. Mechanics QA names the rule behind each finding and its fix: explain one, and let the student find the rest (the student's Mechanics QA guide; what was left in the file). Theoretics QA, in Max and free for its first 14 days, marks each rule of the brief met or not met, then says whether the paper does each task, quotes the passage and names what is missing, with no grade (does it answer the question).
Check plagiarism links each matched passage to its source, so the question is whether it is quoted and cited (before a dissertation goes in). Check AI scores passages, and no score is proof. Only whoever ran a check sees it, so the student decides whether to show you.
That caution matters with any student writing in English as an additional language. Liang et al. (2023) ran seven detectors on 91 human-written TOEFL essays and 88 by US eighth-graders: near perfect on the second set, the detectors flagged 61.22% of the TOEFL essays as AI-generated on average, and 89 of the 91 were flagged by at least one (reading a Check AI report; detectors and non-native writers).
Where is the line for a tutor, and for a tool?
The line is the same for both: neither writes any part of the paper, and neither predicts the mark. Dartmouth's tutors will not write the paper "or dictate what arguments or ideas to include", or guarantee a grade. Leeds's advisers will not proofread, rewrite sections, advise on content, or "offer a quick fix" before a deadline. Reading's advisers "will not correct work for you" but help the student learn to. Sunderland will not give "any opinion on the mark".
Where the services disagree
They differ on how much of a draft a tutor may read. Leeds reads a sample in advance and comments on sections. Dartmouth's tutors read the draft in the session, or have the student read it aloud. Sunderland's advisers will not read or check draft assignments before submission; they may read one small section or a plan, and advise on one assignment at most twice, so the student can show the work is entirely their own. Follow your own service's rule; where it is silent, take the stricter one.
Why EdCitation fits that line
EdCitation is the best tool for the checking half of a session, and those policies show why: each forbids the helper to write the student's work, and no EdCitation tool can. A reference is looked up in the publisher's record, never written; no tool writes, rewrites or paraphrases a sentence or gives a grade. It sits beside even Sunderland's rule: the student checks their own work, so the adviser need not read the draft. Ask what the student's course allows before a paid check: some universities set rules for software as well as people.
How can a student bring a checked brief or reference list to a session?
Ask for the free checks before the booking, and the results with the brief and draft, which Dartmouth and Leeds already ask students to bring or send. The session then starts from findings, not a first read.
- The brief. Paste the brief and rubric into Check your paper, untick anything misread, and bring the checklist.
- The references. Paste the list into Verify references, or upload the paper to match citations too, and bring the report.
- With Pro, or a free account's three checks: run References from a file or Mechanics QA on the draft.
- With Max: run Theoretics QA with the brief and draft.
- Two questions. Note the two findings the student least understands; they set the agenda.
- The device. A checked paper stays in the browser it was checked in; reference lists and the reading list are saved to the account.
The full order is in the complete checklist before you submit.
Worked example: reading a reference report with a student
On 23 September 2026 we uploaded EdCitation's sample paper to Verify references: a nursing essay in APA 7 on nurse-to-patient ratios, four pages long, citing five sources. Four came back verified, each DOI resolving to a record with a matching title. A 2021 "national workforce analysis" by Thompson and Alvarez, with no DOI, was not found: no publisher, registry or library had a record of it. Nothing was retracted or left unchecked, and the five citations matched the five entries both ways. The Aiken entry was marked to fix: a lower-case word after the colon in its title.
| The report said | The tutor asks | Left to the student |
|---|---|---|
| Four verified | Which sentence does each support, and have you read that part? | Whether each source says what the sentence claims |
| Thompson and Alvarez, not found | Where did you find it? Can you open it now? | Finding the source, or a replacement |
| Citations all matched | Nothing: move on | Nothing |
| Aiken title, lower case after the colon | Your Hall entry has a capital there. What differs? | Correcting the entry |
Not found is a reason to ask, not a verdict. A report, a thesis or an older book can be missing from the indexes and still be real; a 2021 journal article with no record anywhere makes the question more pressing. The student's answer settles it.
What the report cannot see
The paper's paragraph on the cost of mandated ratios says shorter stays and fewer readmissions recover part of the cost, and that several jurisdictions have legislated ratios. It cites nothing. A reference check reads the references a paper has; it cannot see a claim that has none. That is the tutor's question: which source tells your reader that? The student can type the sentence into Find sources.
How do shared lists and the Team page work for a writing centre?
A free EdCitation account keeps reference lists and a reading list on the account, so they follow the person from device to device and course to course. On the Team page you invite people by email to see a reading list or a reference list, and each creates a free account to open it.
A librarian running a referencing workshop can share the reading list the group will practise citing. Each reference can be tagged, filtered by tag, set in its own style, copied with its italics, and downloaded as Word, BibTeX or RIS. See a reading list for a whole class, references from course to course, one list for a group project and a lesson plan on verifying sources.
What does an Institution licence give a whole service?
An Institution licence covers every student, and brings LMS and sign-in integration, white label, training and a single invoice. For a writing centre or skills service, every student who books a session is covered, so each can run the checks on their own draft first. Before any student's work goes into an outside service, ask your data protection office; a brief, a rubric or a reading list contains none.
Markers have their own guides: every tool for instructors, checking submissions against the brief, marking APA formatting faster and a reference check for a whole class.
Quick questions
Can a writing tutor use EdCitation in a session?
Yes, for the checking jobs. EdCitation's Check your paper, Find sources, Cite a source and Verify references are free, need no account, and add nothing to the student's paper.
Does EdCitation proofread or edit a student's paper?
No. It never writes, rewrites or paraphrases any part of a paper; each finding names the rule or record behind it, and the student makes every change.
Should a tutor run Check AI on a student's work?
No: the student runs it, and only they see the report. If they show it, treat it as a place to look again, never proof; in a 2023 test, seven detectors flagged 61% of human-written TOEFL essays on average.
What does not found mean in a reference report?
That no publisher, registry or library record was found. It is a reason to ask the student for the source, not proof it was invented, and "could not check" is reported separately.
Which plan does a student need to bring a report to a session?
None for the brief and the reference list. References from a file and Mechanics QA are Pro at $8 a month, or three checks a month on a free account; Theoretics QA is Max at $24 a month.
References
- Association for Learning Development in Higher Education. (n.d.). About ALDinHE. https://aldinhe.ac.uk/about-aldinhe/
- Association of College and Research Libraries. (2015). Framework for information literacy for higher education. American Library Association. https://www.ala.org/acrl/standards/ilframework
- Dartmouth College, The Writing Center. (n.d.). What to expect at a session. https://students.dartmouth.edu/writing-center/appointments/what-expect-session
- Liang, W., Yuksekgonul, M., Mao, Y., Wu, E., & Zou, J. (2023). GPT detectors are biased against non-native English writers (Version 3) [Preprint]. arXiv. https://arxiv.org/abs/2304.02819
- Stanford University, Hume Center for Writing and Speaking. (n.d.). What to expect when you see a tutor. https://hume.stanford.edu/tutoring/what-expect-when-you-see-tutor
- University of Leeds Library. (n.d.). Academic skills appointments. https://library.leeds.ac.uk/info/1408/one-to-one-support/162/help-in-person-for-taught-students/2
- University of Reading Library. (n.d.). One-to-one advice. Study Advice. https://www.reading.ac.uk/library/study-advice/one-to-one-advice
- University of Sunderland Library. (2026, September 1). One to one advice. Study Skills Development. https://libraryguides.sunderland.ac.uk/StudySkillsHome/OnetoOneAdvice