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Paperpal Preflight—the one-stop solution for all editorial checks publishers and authors need

Cactus Communications

October 20, 2020

Cactus Communications (CACTUS), a technology company accelerating scientific advancement, launched its new AI-powered manuscript screening tool called Paperpal Preflight today. Powered by machine learning and trained on millions of published articles, Paperpal Preflight helps reduce journal editorial workload for manuscripts by identifying common errors and omissions in language and technical reporting prior to journal submission.

The launch of Paperpal Preflight marks the first use of machine learning and advanced text intelligence technologies in supporting authors at the point of manuscript submission. Preflight is a plug-and-play solution that requires no integration with third-party systems and can instantly be made available to authors, together with a list of the pre-submission checks selected by their chosen journal.

Commenting on the launch, Mads Rydahl, VP Products at Cactus Labs, said, “We know from extensive surveys that the burden of manuscript preparation and manuscript assessment weighs heavily on authors and editors. Paperpal Preflight not only speeds up publication by helping editors make better and faster decisions, but also delights authors with immediate and high-quality feedback that can be used to improve their manuscript. It was clear to us that for Preflight to be successful, it needed to be the most accurate and comprehensive tool available. Our initial results suggest that we’ve succeeded on all of these accounts.”

With recent surveys indicating that almost 50% of authors find preparing manuscripts for peer review very or extremely difficult and that 83% of editorial offices would like to have software that help authors self-assess manuscripts before journal submission, the gap at the pre-submission stage of journal workflow is clear. This unmet need has resulted in consistently inflated times to first decision and sub-optimal author and editor experiences — something that Preflight hopes to improve.

Shedding further light on where Preflight fits in the scholarly landscape, Abhishek Goel, Co-Founder and CEO, CACTUS, remarked, “There are many dedicated researchers, journal editors, and peer reviewers working hard every day to make scholarly publishing better, and our goal is to help them in their journey. One of the ways in which we’ve tried to do this is by introducing technology to augment existing processes. With Paperpal Preflight, I believe we’ve taken this a step further by offering a powerful upstream tool that saves considerable time and effort through the journal publishing workflow.”

Paperpal Preflight is currently available to authors of Medicine, the flagship mega journal published by Lippincott Williams & Wilkins, an imprint of Wolters Kluwer, and advanced discussions with a number of commercial and society publishers across scholarly disciplines are ongoing. For a demo of the product, please visit here or get in touch directly with the team at hello@paperpal.com.