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.
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. 7. The method of claim 1 further comprising parsing data from the set of cited references and comparing the parsed data with data from the set of at least one authority database to determine the validity of the parsed data.