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.
- Publishers:
  - EDP Sciences: Retraction notices since 2021-10-15
  - Elsevier: Editorial of 2022-12-30
  - IEEE: Retraction notices
  - IOP Publications: Retraction notices since 2022-08-31
  - PLOS: Retraction notices since 2025-05-15
  - SAGE: Retraction notices since 2025-01-15
  - Springer Nature: Press release of 2025-07-17
  - 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
  - Compilation 1D345 Copyright: 2025-08-26 and this LinkedIn post
  - Morressier: 2023-11-23
  - River Valley: 2025-01-09
  - Springer Nature: 2025-07-17
  - Signals: 2024-06-20
  - STM Integrity Hub: 2023-04-13
- 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 much work is it to assess the candidate papers the PPS daily flags? (i.e., deciding between Problematic vs. Genuine)
A: Here is the timeline of our group's efforts (see the details in the Assessor column of the various detectors):

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

Assessments

FAQ 2

Images