The University of Pécs now offers its teachers, researchers and doctoral students access to Paperpal Prime, an excellent resource for enhancing the quality of scientific papers written in English. Paperpal is a platform, along with an Office extension, that provides authors with various tools and services to simplify the writing and editing processes for publications. A significant benefit of this service is its immediate and effective proofreading, which helps authors ensure that their work is linguistically accurate and easily understandable. This is especially important for non-native English speakers, as errors can often hinder the drafting and publication process.
Let’s briefly examine the toolset that Paperpal’s web interface offers to help us in the authoring process.
Linguistic and stylistic corrections
The platform automatically detects and corrects grammatical errors, stylistic problems and gaps in sentence structure. This allows authors to be confident that their work will be of the best quality for a professional audience. List of available correction tools:
Edit
- Recognise British or American English and adhere to consistent usage
- Grammar check tools: suggest paraphrases, identify word usage errors, find contextual synonyms, improve sentence structure, spelling and punctuation
- Style and coherence check: suggesting a consistent use of a particular style/tone, checks for consistent use of figures, tables, references, technical terms, equations, and non-English technical terms
Rewrite – for paragraphs/sections of up to 500 words
- Rewording of sentences and paragraphs
- Use of scientific tone and style
- Check for variation and fluency
- Condensation of a passage
- Simplification of a passage
- Recommending synonyms of appropriate word choice depending on context
Write
Generate text based on predefined instructions:
- completing, explaining or summarising a finished or partially written text with relevant, contextually correct sentences
- formulating problems, deductions or supporting statements
- constructing connecting sentences and concluding statements
Literature search
Research and Cite
This feature helps you easily find additional reliable literature for your manuscript without leaving the Paperpal interface and automatically incorporate it into your text, citing it in the appropriate reference format. The feature includes:
- Built-in bibliographic search: searches over 250 million scholarly sources, including those on more complex topics.
- Citation management: an instantly retrievable source library can be defined for the literature used, with thousands of standard citation styles. These references can be placed in your manuscript with a single click.
Manuscript checking functions
Checks
It is worth highlighting the Checks option, a comprehensive checking system designed to ensure the quality and compliance of your manuscripts. It provides automatic, detailed reviews and recommendations in the following main areas:
- Plagiarism search (based on Turnitin): produces a limited report of up to 10,000 words per month for manuscripts submitted in Word or PDF format.
- Manuscript pre-submission (for publication) check: Over 30 linguistic and technical compliance factors are used to determine whether a manuscript is ready for submission. There is no limit to the number of documents that can be uploaded!
- AI Review: provides targeted feedback to improve scientific texts’ quality, structure, and suitability for publication.
Additional functions
Translate
A translation function based on DeepL, available in more than 30 languages; it can operate with text selections of approximately 300-350 words.
Templates
A feature specifically designed to simplify, speed up and professionalise the scientific research and writing process. It has the following main features and benefits.
Wide range of templates:
- Template generation (article, case study, essay, target definition)
- Create content preparation elements (title, abstract, keywords, brainstorming, summary for laymen, content summary)
- Templates for communication with publishers (e-mail templates)
Chat based on PDFs (Chat PDF)
Users can upload full-text documents, which Paperpal interprets and then answers questions asked by users based on the text. In each case, the source of the answers is indicated, so you can always see which elements of the PDF file have been used to generate the answer. As with most similar services, Paperpal suggests additional questions for the user, generates a one-click summary of the currently opened file, and can also search for literature on a topic related to the current one.
Office365 Extension
Paperpal’s services are not limited to web browsers. You can install the Paperpal extension from the Microsoft Office Extensions menu in both the desktop and the web Word application. Once logged in as a user, you can access the same functionality via a sidebar provided by Paperpal’s native web environment.
Data security
In addition to the system’s security measures, it guarantees that your uploaded research data and full texts will not be used for any other purpose. Documents are protected by encryption during transmission between upload and download and are automatically deleted after 90 days. The system is ISO/IEC 27001:2013 certified, which is an internationally recognised verification that the information security system meets the highest standards.
How can you access PaperPal?
The Department of Publication and Research Support of the UP University Library and Knowledge Centre manages the service. For details, please visit the library website.
Closing thoughts
In academic writing, in addition to the high quality of the content, linguistic and formal quality are also crucial. Paperpal can substantially support our university’s research and publication processes in this area. While it is not a substitute for professional reflection or scientific rigour, it can be a reliable tool to facilitate a smoother preparation, finalisation and successful international publication of manuscripts.