Help & reference

What file formats are supported?

JATS XML (the bioRxiv/medRxiv preprint format) gives the cleanest parsing. PDFs also work, where the parser extracts title, authors, sections, and corresponding-author emails heuristically. You can also paste title + abstract + full text directly if you'd rather skip uploading a file.

How does the system pick journals?

The pipeline is composed of three agents: a manuscript-understanding agent that builds a structured representation of the paper, a literature-retrieval agent that assesses overlap and positioning relative to prior work, and a journal-fit reasoning agent that integrates both to produce a ranked list of candidate journals. The paper is scored across novelty, writing quality, conceptual soundness, and impact potential, then matched to journals using both quality and topic fit to the inferred subject areas.

What does the date cutoff mean?

PASS uses this date to classify retrieved papers as prior art (published before), concurrent work (within the grace window after), or future context (after the grace window). It's auto-extracted from your uploaded manuscript. To override it, for example, if you submitted your paper a while ago and want recommendations based on what the field looked like at that time, or if you want to use today's date, set the Submission date field under Advanced configuration on the Start analysis page.

Why do different runs sometimes give different rankings?

The LLM is not deterministic. The same input can yield slightly different scores or wording on different runs. To reduce noise, every analysis runs the final ranking step three times and the report is ensembled across them.

How long does an analysis take?

Typically about 15 minutes end-to-end. You can close the tab and come back — you'll get an email when it's done.

Who can see my uploaded manuscripts?

Only you (and the platform admins). Manuscripts are stored in your account.

Can I re-run an analysis?

Yes. Just submit the same manuscript again from the New analysis page. Each submission gets a fresh paper id so you can compare runs.

I have a specific candidate journal list, how do I build it?

On the Start analysis page, expand Advanced configuration and build your own list or pick one or more SCImago subject areas plus a top-N SJR cutoff (default 100). SJR (SCImago Journal Rank) is a citation-weighted prestige metric that ranks journals within each subject area. Top-N picks the most-prestigious N within the areas you select. The agent then will only consider journals from that shortlist when recommending.

How do I delete an analysis?

From your dashboard ("My papers"), each analysis has a small delete control. This hides the analysis from your view but keeps the row + any feedback you submitted in the database for research purposes. Contact the team if you need a hard delete.