The present invention comprises a system and method for automatically processing one or more citations contained within a document while the document is presented by a document rendering application. The method of the present invention comprises scanning the document to identify an unformatted citation and parsing the unformatted citation to determine one or more citation terms. One or more citation libraries are queried to find citations comprising the one or more citation terms. A citation falling within the scope of the query is selected and inserted into the document. The present invention may further provide enhanced workflow solutions for authors and publishers in preparing documents in structured format for facilitating efficient and accurate validation of references cited or included in papers and other submissions for publication or for review. An author prepares a document containing a set of cited references using a formatting structure. A system includes a processor to process the document to extract embedded metadata associated with the set of cited references. The processor executes code associated with a reference validation software module and automatically recognizes the formatting structure and the embedded metadata. The processor automatically extracts the embedded metadata and compares the extracted metadata against an authority database to determine the validity of the set of cited references.