Springer Nature expands its portfolio of research integrity tools to detect non-standard phrases
London | Berlin | New York, 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 If a number of non-standard phrases are identified by the tool, the submission will be withdrawn.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.
Tamara Welschot, Head of Research Integrity, Prevention at Springer Nature, commented
“Fake research is a challenge that affects all of us in the publishing industry and we all need to work together to combat it. Developing this tool has been a long-running project involving close collaboration between the research integrity group and several technology teams at Springer Nature, building upon important work by integrity sleuths from the academic community. We thank Cabanac, Labbé and Magazinov for their efforts in developing the Problematic Paper Screener and highlighting papers containing tortured phrases to the wider publishing community. Our tool identifies these problematic papers at submission, preventing them from being published and saving the editors and reviewers’ valuable time.”
The non-standard phrases detector tool is the newest addition to Springer Nature’s suite of research integrity solutions and complements existing tools; a nonsense text detector, Snappshot (which identifies duplicate or manipulated images), and an irrelevant reference checker tool. These tools have been developed in-house as part of Springer Nature’s ongoing commitment to ensure the integrity of the work it publishes. This commitment includes investment in a rapidly growing, expert team and ongoing technology development. Springer Nature is also committed to collaborating with the wider publishing community, as a contributing organisation in the STM Integrity Hub, which facilitates knowledge and data exchange and develops shared technology tools, and to which Springer Nature has donated its nonsense text detector for use across the sector.
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About the Problematic Paper Screener
The Problematic Paper Screener (PPS) developed by Guillaume Cabanac and colleagues, is a free tool designed to identify potentially problematic research articles. One of the indicators it uses is the inclusion of unusual phrases, referred to as “tortured phrases”, that paraphrase established terminology in awkward or convoluted ways. Initially applied to computer science papers, the group have since expanded the tool to screen all the published literature, supporting efforts to uphold research integrity.
Cabanac, G., Labbé, C., & Magazinov, A. (2022). The ‘Problematic Paper Screener’ automatically selects suspect publications for post-publication (re)assessment. Presented at WCRI 2022: 7th World Conference on Research Integrity: https://doi.org/10.48550/arXiv.2210.04895
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Hodan Omar | Corporate Affairs | Springer Nature
hodan.omar@springernature.com
Alice Henchley | Corporate Affairs | Springer Nature
alice.henchley@springernature.com
