We run a service that reads research manuscripts and answers questions editors actually act on.

Is there an ethical approval statement?

Does the paper mention a clinical trial registration?

Are figure references consistent?

Is the self-citation rate too high?

Each question is a separate check, and an LLM does most of the reading. Because the system is already in production, mistakes matter in a very practical way: a false missing signal wastes someone’s time, and a false pass lets a real issue move further down the line.

At first, evaluating these checks looked simple.…