PPS – FAQ

Frequently Asked Questions

Q: Can I upload documents to the Problematic Paper Screener to screen for tortured phrases and other anomalies?
A: The Problematic Paper Screener screens the published literature that is indexed by Dimensions.
It does not screen documents on demand: no upload functionnality is provided.
Use one of the software listed in the following item to screen documents/manuscripts on demand.
Q: Which organisations use the Problematic Paper Screener to screen drafts/manuscripts (based on the fingerprints) and published articles?
A: A few of them, see the following public communications that followed years of undocumented use in most cases.
- Institutions:
  - CCSD CNRS-INRAE-Inria, France: Episciences, 2026-06-29
  - Inist CNRS, France: Istex and TDM Factory that hosts bibCheck (Gaillard et al., 2025): an online tool to verify bibliographies and flag retracted/nonexistent references, 2024-12-11
  - University of Borås, Sweden: since 2026-03-11
- Publishers:
  - ACM: Integrity Check Criteria and Review Criteria (correspondence with integrity staff since 2021-12-02)
  - AIP Publishing: Retraction notices since 2025-12-22
  - Cambridge University Press: Job offer mentioning the PPS, 2026-05
  - EDP Sciences: Retraction notices since 2021-10-15
  - Elsevier: Editorial of 2022-12-30
  - IEEE: 2k retraction notices and article 2026-07-30
  - IOP Publications: Retraction notices since 2022-08-31
  - PLOS: Retraction notices since 2025-05-15
  - Sage: Retraction notices and adoption of Dimensions Author Check since 2024-12-12
  - Springer Nature: Press release of 2025-07-17
  - Taylor & Francis: since 2021 (personal communication, 2026-06-30)
  - Wiley: Research Exchange Screening (personal communication, 2024-10-09)
- Software vendors of research integrity products:
  - Cactus: Paperpal Preflight screens for tortured phrases
  - Clarivate analytics: 2023-11-15 (see Step 3 in Figure 1)
  - Clear Skies: 2022-10-31
  - Compilatio 1D345 Copyright: 2025-08-26 and this LinkedIn post
  - Digital Science: Dimensions Author Check (since 2024-06 at least)
  - Imagetwin: 2026-01-22 (personal communication)
  - KIONOS: TOTH Research, 2026-03-26 (personal communication)
  - Morressier: 2023-11-23
  - Premier Science: 2026-03-26
  - River Valley: 2025-01-09
  - Springer Nature: 2025-07-17
  - Signals: 2024-06-20
  - STM Integrity Hub: 2023-04-13
- Sleuths:
  - Dorothy Bishop: An analysis of PubPeer comments on highly-cited retracted articles, 2026-02-02
  - Indian Retraction Watch (IRW): Journal Trends since 2026-05
- See also the citations to the Tortured Phrases preprint and the PPS preprint.
Q: How can I contribute newly-found tortured phrases?
A: Report them using the Feedback feature, see top-right menu. The administrators will review them and add the most promising ones (with low false positive rate). We also read every PubPeer post and collect new suggestions from there. More information on this PubPeer comment.
Q: What does the tilde (~) character mean in a fingerprint?
A: The PPS queries Dimensions with the tilde proximity operator: see the associated fingerprints. A fingerprint looking like "A B C"~5 with the tilde operator means: Find articles that feature words A, B, and C together in a 5-word window. We use this search strategy to catch variants like "A B C" and "A z B y C"...
Q: How do I show the DOI of each paper?
A: On a report, go to the ‘Actions’ menu, pick Columns, and select the columns you'd like to show.
Q: How do I link to the result of a filtered report?
A: Build a URL such as...
- For publishers: ACM, Elsevier, Frontiers, IEEE, MDPI...
- For venues:
  - Air Quality, Atmosphere & Health
  - Arabian Journal of Geosciences
  - Cogent Engineering
  - Environmental Science and Pollution Research
  - Microprocessors and Microsystems
  - Optical and Quantum Electronics
  - The Springer-Nature SN Whatever series
- For sleuths:
- For topics:
  - Autism
  - Alzheimer
  - Cancer
  - Parkinson
  - ...
- For tortured terms:
  - acid
  - cancer
  - immune system
  - pain
  - ...
- For Feet of Clay articles:
  - that are citing the retracted Nature paper ‘Microbiome analyses of blood and tissues suggest cancer diagnostic approach’ cited 750+ times
  - (Now) retracted articles citing retracted reference(s)
  - Latest Feet of Clay report for an article (e.g., 10.1016/j.intimp.2020.106594)
- For Annulled articles:
  - Retracted articles by EDP Sciences that are not registered in the Retraction Database or Pubmed
- For Expressions of Concern:
  - List all Expressions of Concern
- For a list of DOIs
  - Example of a search for 2 DOIs

Q: How can I find overlapping text between two documents?
A: Try SimTexter (see the examples) and Text Compare (see the examples).

SimTexter

Text Compare

FAQ 1

Frequently Asked Questions

FAQ 2

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