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letter
. 2022 Jun 11;15:203. doi: 10.1186/s13104-022-06080-6

Table 1.

Examples of automated tools used to screen preprints, submitted papers or publications

Tool Screening topics and rationale
Sciscore [18]

Many factors, including:

RRIDs: Unique persistent identifiers that allow readers to determine exactly what resource (e.g., cell line, antibody, model organism, software) was used

Ethics & consent statements: Required for legal compliance

Blinding & randomization: The failure to blind or randomize experiments is associated with overestimated effect sizes

Sample size calculations: Provide information about whether the study was designed and powered to detect an effect of an expected size

Sex/gender: Effects may differ according to sex or gender

ODDPub [19] Open data, open code: Open data and open code make it easier to reproduce analyses, identify potential errors, and re-use data
Limitation-recognizer [20] Author-acknowledged limitations: Every study has limitations. Acknowledging limitations provides essential context that allows readers to interpret the study results
Barzooka [21] Bar graphs of continuous data: Many datasets can lead to the same bar graph and the actual data may suggest different conclusions from the summary statistics alone. These graphs should be replaced with dot plots, box plots or violin plots
Jetfighter [22] Rainbow color maps: Rainbow color maps are not colorblind accessible, and create visual artifacts for readers with normal color vision

Trial registration

number screener

Clinical trial registration numbers: Clinical trials must be registered in an International Clinical Trials Registry Platform registry, and this number must be reported in publications. This makes it easier to detect practices like outcome switching
Statcheck [7] Misreported p-values: p-values that do not match the reported test statistic and degrees of freedom are common and can sometimes alter study conclusions
Scite reference check Citation of retracted papers, or papers with corrections or errata: Checking cited papers for editorial notices can help to identify potentially problematic citations
Seek and blastn (semi-automated) [23] Confirms that nucleotide sequences were correctly identified: Incorrect identification or use of nucleotide sequences makes it difficult to interpret or reproduce study results. Results from this tool require confirmation from an expert reviewer