You cannot delete a reference from the RefCheck database, but you can remove it by simply deleting its in-text citation from the manuscript document. No changes to other in-text citation need to be made; importantly, please do not renumber any references during copyediting.
For example, if you no longer want to cite reference 3, delete the in-text citation (eg, [3]) from the Step 2 Microsoft Word file, without changing [4] and subsequent citations. During typesetting, our scripts will omit that reference and automatically renumber all subsequent references and in-text citations in the final proof, in the order of their appearance in the text.
Note that after copyediting (in the proofreading/galleys stage), no changes to the order of references can be made without additional costs (as this requires manual re-ordering); therefore, copyediting is your last chance to edit the references.
See also: