(17 Jul 2025) Springer Nature has launched a new tool for use across submissions to its journals and books to detect non-standard phrases in submitted manuscripts, marking the latest step in its ongoing mission to uphold research integrity and safeguard the scholarly record.
The tool works by detecting unusual phrases that have been awkwardly constructed or are excessively convoluted, for example ‘counterfeit consciousness’ instead of ‘artificial intelligence’. Such phrases are indicators that authors have used paraphrasing tools to evade plagiarism detection. If a number of non-standard phrases are identified by the tool, the submission will be withdrawn.
The tool has been developed using the public tortured phrases catalogue of the Problematic Paper Screener (PPS) created by Guillaume Cabanac, Cyril Labbé and Alexander Magazinov and has undergone multiple rounds of testing and validation to provide a reliable assessment of submissions across academic disciplines.
The press release in full is here.
