Paper Review · Psychology and social science

A pre-submission review for psychology papers.

Choose the psychology and social-science profile at upload and the four reviewers check the things replication-minded referees now ask about first: pre-registration, forking paths, samples and effect sizes.

Start a review, from $9 See a sample report

The psychology and social-science profile

What the reviewers look for

These are the instructions the profile adds to the review, in plain words. Each finding in the report quotes the passage it is about and says what would fix it.

Pre-registration. Whether the study was pre-registered, and whether the analysis reported matches the plan; predictions that read as hypothesized after the results were known.
Forking paths. Many outcomes and moderators with only the significant ones reported, and whether robustness or multiverse checks cover the researcher's choices.
Samples. WEIRD samples generalized to everyone, and MTurk or Prolific samples treated as representative.
Effect sizes. Small effects presented as practically meaningful.
Measures. New scales used without reported reliability; alphas under 0.7 are flagged.
Design checks. Manipulation checks present and working, order effects and counterbalancing disclosed.
Confounds. Demographic variables left uncontrolled.
Replication. Whether there is independent replication, or this study is the only evidence.

What a finding looks like

An example from the report

Illustrative, not from a real manuscript: this is the shape each finding takes. The full sample report shows every section.

The reported analysis departs from the pre-registration.
Quoted: "As predicted, the effect was moderated by trait anxiety."
Surfaced by: Methodology Critic, Editor-in-Chief (consensus).
Fix: The pre-registered plan lists anxiety as an exploratory covariate, not a moderator. Label this analysis exploratory, or report the pre-registered model first.

In every review

The rest of the report

Four reviewers: a Methodology Critic, a Statistical Skeptic, a Data Integrity Officer and an Editor-in-Chief, with findings more than one of them raise listed first.
Every reference checked against CrossRef, and for the most important claims, the cited paper's abstract read to see whether it supports the sentence citing it.
A figure and table scan for integrity and presentation problems.
An anonymity scan for double-blind submission.
A prioritized checklist, as a Markdown report and an annotated PDF with comments on the pages they refer to.
The Journal Pack ($11) adds a check against one venue's submission rules. In psychology and social science it covers Psychological Science, Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, Cognition and Academy of Management Journal. All 25 venues.

Questions

Does it work for qualitative or mixed-methods papers?

It reads any manuscript, and the general reviewers still check whether the evidence supports each claim. The psychology profile's specific checks are written for quantitative studies, so for qualitative work the General profile may fit better.

How do I choose this profile?

Pay on the Paper Review page, then pick the domain on the upload page. Starting from this page selects it for you. There are five: Machine Learning, Biomedicine, Psychology / Social Science, Chemistry / Materials, and General.

What happens to the manuscript?

It is sent to Anthropic's Claude API for the review and deleted from Purplelink's storage 30 minutes after you first open the result, or after 24 hours if you never do. Anthropic keeps API inputs for up to 30 days for abuse monitoring and does not train on them.

How long does it take and what does it cost?

Standard is $9 and the Journal Pack $11, usually back in 4 to 8 minutes. Deep Review is $15 and takes 10 to 15. There is no subscription or account.

Read it before Reviewer 2 does.

From $9, usually back in 4 to 8 minutes. No account, no subscription.

Start a review

Other profiles: Machine learning Biomedicine Chemistry and materials