New AI-Powered Tool Improves Manuscript Screening for Journals and Authors

Cactus Communications (CACTUS), a technology company accelerating scientific advancement, has announced the availability of Paperpal Preflight, the world’s first manuscript screening tool powered by AI and machine learning. Paperpal Preflight is a plug-and-play web-based system that is available for immediate use by authors and journal editors, providing pre-submission checks of manuscripts covering factors such as word count, quality of language, age of references and technical reporting.
Paperpal Preflight uses machine learning algorithms, trained by analysing millions of articles before and after publication, to identify language and technical errors in manuscripts and provide immediate, in-depth feedback to help authors improve their submission quality. This is currently available to authors submitting to more than 150 journals across top academic publishers for physics, medicine, engineering, humanities, and social sciences. Paperpal Preflight also reduces journal editors’ workload by providing a comprehensive pre-submission suite of checks that are customized to journal requirements.
Mads Rydahl, VP Products at Cactus Labs, explained, “We know from extensive industry surveys that 83% of editorial offices want a system for authors to self-assess manuscripts before submission, ensuring every manuscript that reaches editors, meets the journal’s guidelines for language and technical reporting. Journal editors are often overworked and Paperpal Preflight addresses this by easing their workflow, speeding up the publication process, and helping them make better, faster decisions.
“Paperpal Preflight is unique, with no other service offering the same degree of technical and language checks for scholarly publishing. It is the most comprehensive manuscript checker available and provides feedback for authors on par with the level of feedback you would normally expect from a human editor in under two minutes”.
Abhishek Goel, Co-Founder and CEO of CACTUS, added, “We are introducing AI and machine learning technology into the journal submission process to improve the scholarly publishing experience for researchers, peer reviewers, and journal editors. Paperpal Preflight does this by providing rapid, in-depth feedback for authors to help them refine submissions and improve their chances of securing publication, while lowering journal editors’ workload, saving significant time and effort in the review process”.
The Paperpal Preflight application is available at no additional cost to publishers and it is currently being used by leading scholarly publishers, Wolters Kluwer, The Royal Society, American Society of Clinical Oncology (ASCO), Emerald Publishing, and Institute of Physics (IOP). They are offering the service to help authors identify language and technical errors in their manuscripts, enabling journals to reduce cost per submission and time to publication.