1. A computer-based method for preparing a document for publication, the method comprising: receiving an electronic document previously prepared by an author using a markup formatting structure, the electronic document including a set of cited references and having a descriptive metadata associated with a set of components of the set of cited references embedded in accordance with the markup formatting structure; and executing on the electronic document a reference validation process adapted to recognize the markup formatting structure and the embedded metadata and further adapted to extract the embedded metadata and compare the extracted metadata against a set of at least one authority database to determine the validity of the set of cited references.
12. The method of claim 1 , wherein the formatting structure is a markup process based on one of XML, GML, and SGML.