Scientific publishing giant Springer Nature has launched a new tool that can detect non-standard phrases in manuscripts submitted to its journals.
The new tool is based upon the tortured phrases catalogue of the Problematic Paper Screener that was created by Guillaume Cabanac, Cyril Labbé and Alexander Magazinov. It flags unusual and awkwardly constructed phrases that could indicate that an author used paraphrasing tools to prevent plagiarism from being discovered. If this tool flags a number of non-standard phrases then the submission will be withdrawn, the publisher explains.
‘Fake research is a challenge that affects all of us in the publishing industry and we all need to work together to combat it,’ stated Tamara Welschot, head of research integrity at Springer Nature. ‘Our tool identifies these problematic papers at submission, preventing them from being published and saving the editors and reviewers’ valuable time.’
Earlier this year, Springer Nature unveiled an AI tool that it created to detect AI-generated text in research manuscripts, formerly known as Geppetto. At the end of April, the company donated it to the International Association of Scientific, Technical & Medical Publisher’s STM Integrity Hub, which is an initiative that provides a cloud-based environment for publishers to check submitted articles for research integrity issues and access to third-party tools.
Beyond these two instruments to identify problematic papers at submission, Springer Nature has also developed Snappshot in-house to identify duplicate or manipulated images, as well as an irrelevant reference checker tool for submitted manuscripts. Initially used to analyse PDF files containing gel and blot images to search for duplications, there are plans to expand Snappshot to cover other types of images and integrity problems, as well as to accelerate checks on papers submitted to Springer Nature journals.
Correction: The title was updated to remove mention that it is AI-based
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