Springer Nature launches new tool to spot awkward, tortured phrases

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 If this tool flags a number of non-standard phrases then the submission will be withdrawn, the publisher explains.