About UNSILO Technical Checks
Technical Checking of manuscripts is a core activity in scholarly publishing — around 5.4m manuscripts are submitted to scholarly journals per year, with just over half of them approved for publication. All these manuscripts are subject to different levels of Technical Checks to ensure that they meet journal guidelines, and many undergo multiple rounds of checks. Correct disclosures (such as conflicts of interest or ethics statements), sections within word limits, correct metadata, correct use of citations and references, acceptable language quality, and many more, are all requirements that occupy editorial teams and authors, and increasingly take much needed time away from other work.
UNSILO Technical Checks use a combination of machine learning, rules, and natural language processing to provide editorial teams and authors with turnkey access to critical information on how well manuscripts adhere to author guidelines. Editorial teams can continue to decide what to screen for, when to build in automation for “robotic” work, when not to, and when in the workflow to request changes from authors.
UNSILO Technical Checks is an API solution that is integrated with ScholarOne and Manuscript Manager, and is scheduled for Q3/Q4 2020 integration with Editorial Manager. Contact us and your system providers to ask for integration with other systems. On request, UNSILO enables free trial access for evaluation purposes.
Benefits
- Accelerate your manuscript processing.
- Release time for other high-value editorial and author work.
- Reduce the efforts spent on unnecessary or duplicated tasks1:
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- 87% of manuscripts are checked before manuscripts are sent to editors.
- 72% of manuscripts are manually double-checked for form–provided information.
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- 56% of manuscripts are checked two or three times before acceptance.
- 33% of manuscripts are returned to authors before review.
- Address problem areas before and after manuscript submission. Around 83% of editorial office survey respondents would like software that helps authors run their own manuscripts through Technical Checks before editorial offices receive the manuscripts1.
Pricing and Deployment
Customers can select Technical Checks from the 25+ checks available.
We offer discount incentives for multi-year license agreements, and purchases of multiple products. Contact us for a conversation about possible discounts and a quote:
| Number of annual manuscript submissions to the Technical Checks API | ||||||||
| Service | < 500 | 501 – 1,000 |
1,001 – 2,500 |
2,501 – 5,000 |
5,001 – 10,000 |
10,001 – 15,000 |
15,001 – 20,000 |
> 20,000 |
| Technical Checks price (EUR) | €500 | €1,000 | €2,500 | €5,000 | €10,000 | €15,000 | €20,000 | To be
negotiated |
Features
| Category | Name | Short Description |
| Disclosures | Conflict of interest (COI) | Checks if COI statements are included |
| Ethics statement | Checks if ethics statements are included | |
| Funding statement | Checks if funding statements are included | |
| Data access statement | Checks if data access/ availability statements are included | |
| Meta Data | Keywords | Checks if author-provided keywords are included |
| Corresponding author’s email address | Checks if the email address of the corresponding author is included | |
| Contributing authors | Lists the contributing authors found in the manuscript | |
| Detection of article type | Check for article type. Can currently determine if manuscript is “original research” or “case report” | |
| Formats | References Included (and count) | Checks that a reference section is included and counts the references |
| Self citations | Checks if number of self citations is above acceptable limits | |
| Reference age distribution | Gives an overview of the age distribution of references in intervals of 5 years | |
| Old references | Checks if the number of old 10 citations (10 years old) is below an acceptable limit | |
| References citations | Checks if reference list items are cited within the manuscript — currently limited to citation sequence/ Vancouver style references | |
| Structured abstract | Checks if the abstract is structured, and if so, lists the sub-headers | |
| Manuscript structure | Checks if the manuscript structure follows the IMRAD model | |
| Language | Language improvements* | Provides language improvement suggestions |
| Inappropriate language | Checks for inappropriate language (sexism, racism) | |
| Tables / Figures / Packaging | Figure legends | Checks if figure legends are included and appear consecutively |
| Table legends | Checks if table legends are included and appear consecutively | |
| Manuscript file citations | Lists citations to figures, tables, and supplemental materials, which can be checked against the submitted file package | |
| Figure and table citations | Check if figures and tables with legends are cited within the manuscript | |
| Image consent* | Checks if images that might identify people/patients are included which may require consent | |
| Counters | Word count | Checks if word count is included, and if not, the words are counted |
| Abstract | Checks if an abstract is included, if it exceeds 250 words and by how many words | |
| Title length | Checks if title exists and counts and lists the number of words and characters in the title | |
| Section lengths | Checks if section headers are included and lists word counts per section | |
| Plagiarism | Plagiarism check* | Integrates with leading plagiarism technology to identify potential plagiarism |
| Other / Misc | Clinical trial | Detects if manuscript is a clinical trial and if confirmed then checks if clinical trial IDs are included by recognition of IDs from 21 registries |
| Meta-analysis | Checks that a “meta-analysis” sub-header is not present in the manuscript | |
| Excessive use of branding | Checks for excessive use of branding in the manuscript (® and ™ symbols) | |
| Plain language summary | Checks if a “plain language summary” is included | |
| Author contributions | Checks if “author contribution” statements are included | |
| Copyrighted methods | Checks if certain copyrighted methods are included | |
| Citations in abstract | Checks if citations appear in the abstract | |
| Abbreviations and definitions | Checks if abbreviations and definitions are included and lists them |
(Features with a “*” will be released later in 2020)