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While it is straightforward to identify citations missing the associated reference (Latex will print a message), there is no easy way to check what references in the bibliography list are never used (cited) in the text. Chkbibitems will do that.

It is a really simple application but I couldn’t find any other one that could do that (without installing perl). It is a command line utility and it is written in c# (.Net 2). It basically checks that for all \bibtitem{X} latex command there exists, at least, one \cite{X} command in the document body.

To use it just open a DOS console and write:

chkbibitems -v file.tex

You will get something like:

Cite found: Fra92 at (108:172)
Cite found: LMGM01 at (110:184)
Bibitem found: Fra92 at (142:0)
Bibitem found: FTJ01 at (144:0)
Bibitem found: LMGM01 at (146:0)
No cited reference found: FTJ01

The –v option is for verbose output.

(108:172) means “line 108, colum 172”.

If you have perl installed you could also try http://www.iac.es/sieinvens/siepedia/pmwiki.php?n=HOWTOs.CheckLatexBibliography or http://www-ljk.imag.fr/membres/Jerome.Lelong/soft/chklref/chklref_manual.html.