20. A system for preparing electronic documents for publication, the system comprising: a. a processor adapted to process at least one electronic document containing a set of at least one cited reference, the electronic document being previously prepared by an author using a markup formatting structure and having a descriptive metadata associated with a set of components of the set of at least one cited reference embedded in accordance with the markup formatting structure; and b. a reference validation software module comprising code executed by the processor and adapted to automatically recognize the markup formatting structure and the embedded metadata and further adapted to automatically 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 at least one cited reference.
20. A system for preparing electronic documents for publication, the system comprising: a. a processor adapted to process at least one electronic document containing a set of at least one cited reference, the electronic document being previously prepared by an author using a markup formatting structure and having a descriptive metadata associated with a set of components of the set of at least one cited reference embedded in accordance with the markup formatting structure; and b. a reference validation software module comprising code executed by the processor and adapted to automatically recognize the markup formatting structure and the embedded metadata and further adapted to automatically 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 at least one cited reference. 37. The system of claim 20 , wherein the reference validation software module is further adapted to present to a user data related to the validity determination and to receive from the user verification data associated with the set of at least one cited reference.