What does penelope check for?
These are the checks that Penelope.ai performs by default. All checks can be turned on or off depending on your journal's specific needs. Let us know if there are any bespoke checks you would like.
Title Page and Abstract
Abstract is structured with correct subheadings
Authors and institutions are named on title page
Corresponding author and email address are provided
Funding section
A funder is named
Conflicts of interest statement
Acknowledgements section
Running head is provided
List of key words
Word count is present on the title page
Ethics and permissions
Ethics statements for human/animal research
Informed consent for research involving humans
Data
Data access statement present
Citations and References
All citations are referenced
All references are cited
Correct referencing system used (Harvard/Vancouver, the generic version suggests Vancouver, but tells authors to double check)
Tables and Figures
Accompanied by legends
All tables and figures are mentioned in the text
Present (or absent) from main manuscript (the generic version suggests tables should be included, but figures should be in a separate file)
Scientific Reporting
Encourages the use of reporting checklists from the EQUATOR library when relevant
Randomisation, blinding and sample size are addressed for experimental studies
Encourages RRIDs for animals and antibodies
Registration
Clinical trials include a registration ID for a recognised registry
What file formats can Penelope check?
Penelope currently checks Word files. Docx files are best, but if an author uploads a .doc file Penelope will try to convert it into a docx before processing. In the coming months we'll begin accepting other file formats such as LaTeX and PDF.
How accurate is Penelope?
We test all checks on a set of documents that have been manually labelled, and make sure they perform at 90% or above. Penelope uses a series of probabilistic algorithms which become increasingly accurate as it processes more articles. We constantly monitor Penelope's performance, and will continue to refine it over time as we encounter new documents with different formatting, writing styles and topics.