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Know a researcher who could use private pre-submission peer review? Share with your lab, coauthors, or grad students — they get a free review.
BUILT FOR LIFE-SCIENCE RESEARCHERS
A private pre-submission review built for life-science authors: surface the objections, journal-fit gaps, and revision priorities that cost teams time after submission.
One month of Starter free while we're in beta — 3 reviews · 3 revision checks · 3 manuscript edits. No credit card required. Feedback on report quality is always welcome and helps us improve.
FROM DRAFT TO SUBMISSION
THE NEW REVIEW ROOM
RefereeBio gives life-science teams a private way to pressure-test a manuscript before submission: likely critiques, statistical objections, journal-fit concerns, and the strongest next move.
A 2026 Nature Portfolio editorial reports that 53% of peer reviewers in a global survey had used AI tools in their work. Read the source.
A BRIEF VIDEO TOUR
A calm tour of the real Referee workflow using a fictional manuscript.
WHAT YOU GAIN
Get ranked revision priorities alongside a credible journal path for the draft you have now.
Referee compares your manuscript across a catalog of 150+ life-science journals, then anchors the review to each venue’s expectations for novelty, mechanism, rigor, scope, and audience. You see a reach, best-fit, and fallback path—not just a prestige list.
Identify statistical and methodological weaknesses before reviewers do.
It translates methods, figures, and reporting choices into reviewer-facing risk: replicate definitions, correction choices, effect sizes, pseudoreplication traps, overclaiming, and missing limitations.
Upload reviewer comments privately and assess whether the revised manuscript has adequately addressed each concern.
Referee tracks major and minor reviewer concerns against your revised manuscript, identifies what is adequately addressed, and flags what still needs work before you resubmit.
LIFE SCIENCE, NOT GENERIC AI
Referee is designed around the decisions life-science teams actually make: whether the evidence supports the claim, what a target venue will expect, and which revision is worth doing before the manuscript enters a slow and expensive review cycle.
Read the FAQEXPLORE THE OUTPUT
Choose a card to preview the part of Referee that matters most to you. The gallery advances automatically, but you remain in control.
SIMULATED EDITORIAL RISK ESTIMATE
Critical gap: replicate structure and effect-size reporting may trigger reviewer concern.
Choose a journal sequence instead of guessing one venue at a time.
Our data prove that TIA-1 condensation drives stress-granule nucleation. Our data indicate that TIA-1 condensation is associated with stress-granule nucleation.
Thus, modulating TIA-1 phase behavior represents a promising strategy. Future work is needed to assess whether modulating TIA-1 condensation directly perturbs stress granule assembly.
REVISION MOMENTUM
75%+24% since first review51% 63% 67% 67% 75%DESIGN PRINCIPLES
The most useful review identifies the two or three objections most likely to change the outcome—not every possible weakness.
It is more useful to surface a statistical or mechanistic gap before submission than after peer review begins.
Referee does not promise publication outcomes. It gives authors a clearer map of risk, leverage, and next steps.
Questions about how Referee works or its limits? Read the FAQ.
END-TO-END MANUSCRIPT INTELLIGENCE
One upload activates the full suite. No juggling tools. No manual handoffs between review, editing, and resubmission.
Three expert reviewer personas — with distinct methodological, statistical, and conceptual lenses — each write a differentiated report anchored to your target journal's standards.
Identifies statistical reporting gaps — replicate definitions, effect sizes, correction choices, pseudoreplication — before a reviewer uses them to question your rigor.
Directional desk-triage signals plus simulated outcome probabilities — desk reject, review, major revision, minor revision — contextualized to your chosen venue.
Searches PubMed and OpenAlex for published work that substantially overlaps your claims. High-overlap results surface as novelty warnings before reviewers raise them.
Sentence-level screening for formulaic, repetitive, or unusually uniform language associated with AI-generated prose. Each flag explains the pattern and suggests a clearer, more natural alternative. Results are probabilistic and do not establish AI authorship.
Matches your manuscript against 150+ life-science journals and returns a reach, best-fit, and fallback cascade ranked by scope, novelty bar, rigor standards, and fit score.
Produces a polished, journal-specific cover letter — with the correct scope framing, complementary-paper callouts, and editorial conventions for your chosen venue.
Track-changes suggestions with inline flags for overclaiming, hedging failures, scope creep, and unclear language — downloadable as an annotated DOCX.
Auto-drafts a structured response to reviewer comments — one reply per concern, in the standard rebuttal format, ready to edit before you resubmit.
Upload your revised manuscript and reviewer comments together. Referee tracks which concerns are addressed, which need more work, and what the delta is from the original.
A journal-specific readiness score that aggregates statistical completeness, novelty, scope fit, and reviewer-risk to tell you whether the manuscript is ready to send.
My Papers hub keeps every review, revision cycle, score trajectory, and exported file in one place — with momentum tracking across your full submission history.
Scope: Referee currently supports primary research articles in the life sciences — biology, biochemistry, biophysics, computational biology, chemical biology, pharmacology, structural biology, genetics, and related disciplines. Support for literature reviews, meta-analyses, and other article types is planned for a future update.
SIMPLE PRICING
When you need more reviews, editing, revision check support, or lab collaboration, upgrade from the same workspace.
BEFORE THE DECISION LETTER
A simulation for manuscript preparation—not an editorial decision or a publication forecast.
FROM DRAFT TO SUBMISSION
THE NEW REVIEW ROOM
As AI-assisted scholarly workflows become more common, authors deserve a disciplined way to pressure-test a manuscript before submission. RefereeBio gives authors a private simulation of critiques, statistical objections, and journal-fit concerns that may surface during review.
A 2026 Nature Portfolio editorial reports that 53% of peer reviewers in a global survey had used AI tools in their work. Read the source.
WHO IT IS FOR
Prepare a submission with a clearer view of desk-rejection risk, likely reviewer objections, and whether the target journal is worth the attempt.
Avoid preventable reviewer criticism by seeing the fixes that matter first, especially around claims, figures, methods, and statistical reporting.
Decide between reach, best-fit, and cascade journals with a structured view of scope, novelty, audience, and revision burden.
BEFORE YOU SUBMIT
Sample report signal"Likely reviewer concern: statistical analysis plan is under-specified for subgroup comparisons."
WHY REFEREE IS DIFFERENT
Most AI manuscript tools help polish prose, summarize literature, or suggest generic improvements. RefereeBio is built around the decision environment: journal fit, reviewer psychology, statistical reporting, desk triage, and the specific objections that can derail a paper after months of waiting.
Feedback is interpreted against venue expectations rather than a universal checklist.
Multiple reviewer archetypes expose conflicting pressures that a single generic AI response misses.
The report checks methods, legends, and reporting signals that reviewers often use to infer fragility.
Instead of giving a long undifferentiated list, Referee identifies what changes the outcome first.
Reach, best-fit, fallback, and related journals are framed as a sequence, not a vanity list.
Turn critique into a PDF, DOCX, or TXT package for lab meetings, coauthors, and revision planning.
HOW IT WORKS
Paste text or upload a PDF, DOCX, or TXT. Select your target journal and research field. That's it — no formatting required.
Three simulated reviewer perspectives score your manuscript against the selected journal's context and write differentiated reports. You also get a statistical methods audit, section-by-section risk flags, and directional desk-triage signals.
Use the ranked fix list to prioritize. The cover letter draft and submission cascade tell you where to send it. If you get reviews back, use the Revision check tool for a point-by-point response framework and revision assessment.
SEE IT IN ACTION
This is a fabricated walkthrough on an invented manuscript, shown to illustrate the output. Every score, signal, and comment below is generated the moment you upload — calibrated to the journal you select.
Sample only. The manuscript, journals, scores, and reviewer language shown here are fictional and for illustration. Journal names are used descriptively for submission-planning context; RefereeBio is independent and not affiliated with, endorsed by, or operated by any journal, publisher, editor, or society.
Referee turns a manuscript into a practical risk readout: likely revision burden, best-fit journal, and the outcome signals that help you decide whether to revise, redirect, or proceed.
This is a simulation for pre-submission manuscript preparation. It is not an official editorial decision, does not impersonate a journal or editor, and should not be treated as a publication forecast.
Scores separate novelty, mechanism, statistics, figures, and scope so the team can focus on the parts reviewers are most likely to punish.
The audit translates methods and figure legends into reviewer-facing risk: replicate definitions, correction choices, effect sizes, and pseudoreplication traps.
Paper type: Cell-biology imaging study with live-cell microscopy, FRAP recovery kinetics, and automated quantification of stress-granule number per cell.
Specify whether granule counts and FRAP measurements are biological or technical replicates, adopt a mixed-effects model that nests cells within independent experiments, and report 95% CIs on FRAP half-times alongside point estimates.
The cascade frames submission as a route: reach, best-fit, fallback, and what to do next if the first decision does not go your way.
Journal selection is based on primary topic, rigor, novelty, and audience — not tools or methods used. Consider Best Fit first; if rejected, move to the next tier rather than a lateral same-prestige journal with different scope.
Reach
High-impact cell biology with strong demand for mechanism and physiological relevance.
Best Fit
Best Fit reflects both strong topical alignment and the optimal selectivity tier for this manuscript's current form — not simply the highest fit score. A higher-fit reach journal may have a lower score here because its selectivity bar exceeds the manuscript's current strength.
Rigorous cell biology with emphasis on quantitative imaging, mechanism, and data quality.
Fallback
Transparent, constructive review with appetite for methodologically careful cell-biology studies.
For a higher-tier target, Referee identifies the few changes most likely to move the editorial needle instead of burying you in generic advice.
To reach Nature Cell Biology, the manuscript needs a causal mechanistic link between TIA-1 condensation and a functional cellular outcome, plus validation in a second physiological context.
These are the 3 specific changes most likely to close the gap between your submission journal and the reach journal. Ranked by likely impact on desk-triage risk.
Move beyond correlation between TIA-1 phase separation and granule number toward a causal test — for example, a separation-of-function mutant that abolishes condensation without disrupting RNA binding. The abstract should open with a mechanistic principle, not a phenotype.
Why Nature Cell Biology requires this: Nature Cell Biology weights conceptual and mechanistic advance more heavily than Journal of Cell Biology — closing this gap is the single highest-leverage change for the next selectivity tier.
Extend beyond the U2OS cell model to at least one primary or in vivo context where oxidative stress is physiologically relevant — for instance, primary neurons or a tissue oxidative-stress paradigm.
Why Nature Cell Biology requires this: Nature Cell Biology expects multi-system evidence for a central mechanistic claim rather than a single immortalized cell line.
Replace pooled-granule FRAP with per-cell nested statistics and report effect sizes with confidence intervals; add a dose-response across oxidative load rather than a single concentration.
Why Nature Cell Biology requires this: Reviewers at this tier read quantitative rigor as a proxy for whether the central mechanistic claim will hold up.
The final layer converts reviewer risk into concrete language changes, margin comments, and exportable edits your coauthors can act on.
Oxidative stress triggers the rapid assembly of cytoplasmic stress granules, membraneless organelles that sequester translationally stalled mRNAs alongside a network of RNA-binding proteins.1–4 TIA-1, a prion-like-domain protein, has been repeatedly identified as a core scaffold of these granules across human cell lines and primary cultures.5,6
Our data prove that TIA-1 condensation drives stress-granule nucleation Our data indicate that TIA-1 condensation is associated with stress-granule nucleation, with granule number scaling with the fraction of TIA-1 partitioned into the condensed phase.7 While it remains unclear whether condensation is a cause or a consequence of translational arrest, granule burden offers a tractable readout Whether condensation is a cause or a consequence of translational arrest remains unresolved. Regardless, granule burden offers a tractable, indirect readout of the cellular response to oxidative load. Thus, modulating TIA-1 phase behavior represents a promising strategy for tuning the stress response.F04 However, current approaches to perturbing condensation in living cells remain limited, and the field still lacks a separation-of-function tool that decouples assembly from RNA binding.8,9
PRIVATE
Use Referee before circulating a draft, before choosing a journal, or before a high-stakes resubmission. The goal is to expose the objections while they are still inexpensive to fix.
SPECIFIC
The same paper can look ambitious at one venue and underpowered at another. Referee frames critique against the target journal's likely tolerance for novelty, mechanism, statistics, and scope.
The product uses a journal catalog with venue-specific priors, reviewer weighting, and submission-context expectations.
Referee samples a weighted archetype pool, from constructive mentors to statistical enforcers and high-bar gatekeepers.
Reviewer mood, panel composition, and a calibrated Reviewer 2 effect model the kind of variability authors often experience in peer review.
WHAT THE MODEL CONSIDERS
RefereeBio combines AI manuscript interpretation with structured criteria such as novelty, conceptual depth, mechanism, technical strength, statistical confidence, figure strength, and scope fit. The scores are interpreted against the selected journal's culture rather than treated as universal.
The output is framed as simulated editorial risk: desk-triage vulnerability, post-review revision risk, and likely revision burden. It also ranks what to fix first so authors can improve the manuscript before submission. These are directional strategy signals, not actual journal outcome probabilities.
EXAMPLE PRIMARY REPORT
See the kind of primary manuscript report Referee generates: score criteria, reviewer-style objections, journal fit, ranked fixes, and submission strategy in one scrollable example.
REVISION MOMENTUM
Run the draft, revise the high-yield weaknesses, then watch your manuscript score improve as each version gets closer to submission-ready.
Start with my draftPRICING
The free paper is a trial, not a plan. Paid tiers include monthly review limits, editing access, revision check tools, history, exports, and seats.
BEFORE THE DECISION LETTER
PRICING
Every account gets one one-time trial review. Paid tiers use Stripe checkout and unlock continued access after the trial paper is used.
Paid plans are not yet active. Every account currently receives a complimentary Starter tier — 3 reviews, 3 revision checks, and 3 manuscript edits per calendar month — while Referee continues to improve. The prices below reflect what plans will cost at launch.
Analyzing your manuscript...
ANALYSIS IN PROGRESS
PRIVATE MANUSCRIPT INTELLIGENCE
Three simulated reviewers. Journal-calibrated risk signals. A ranked fix list. Ready before you submit.
FAQ
RefereeBio™ is a pre-submission preparation tool. These answers summarize the most important privacy, affiliation, and responsible-use limits.
WHAT REFEREE ANALYZES & PREPARES
Each report assesses the manuscript against the expectations of its journal context, then turns the most important risks into clear next steps.
Your manuscript is used to generate your private report, saved history, exports, and requested editing or revision check features. RefereeBio does not publish your uploads, submit them to journals, or sell manuscript content.
RefereeBio does not intentionally use private manuscripts to train public AI models. Manuscript text may be sent to configured AI providers to generate requested output, subject to provider terms and data-processing settings.
Referee does not make publication decisions, contact editors, submit manuscripts, certify statistics, replace collaborators or compliance review, or promise that a revision will change any journal outcome.
No. Journal and publisher names are used descriptively for submission-planning context only. RefereeBio is independent and is not affiliated with, endorsed by, sponsored by, certified by, or operated by any journal, publisher, editor, society, or indexing service.
No, not by default. Do not upload protected health information, patient-identifying data, HIPAA-covered data, FERPA-covered records, export-controlled data, classified data, or other specially regulated content unless RefereeBio signs a separate written agreement covering that data.
Yes. Uploaded manuscript files can be deleted while generated reports remain in your account history. Some operational records may remain temporarily in backups, logs, payment records, provider systems, or security records where required.
UNDERSTANDING YOUR RESULTS
Referee reports several different signals. They answer different questions and should not be read as interchangeable grades or publication probabilities. Read the methodology for a full explanation of each dimension.
This is a journal-independent assessment of the manuscript in its current form. It combines the underlying dimensions of scientific strength and reporting quality, with greater weight on statistical confidence, claim–evidence alignment, and methodological robustness. Figure strength contributes when figures are available. It is not an acceptance probability, journal percentile, or editorial decision.
Additional factors such as study scale, methodological robustness, and claim–evidence alignment may contribute to the overall score even when they are not shown as separate headline bars.
Journal fit is journal-dependent and separate from manuscript quality. It combines relevance to the journal's scope and readership with whether the manuscript's novelty, mechanistic depth, statistical rigor, evidence base, and study scale meet that venue's expectations. It is therefore neither a pure topic-relevance score nor the manuscript's overall score, and it is not an acceptance probability.
Reach is a credible stretch target. Best Fit balances topical alignment with the most appropriate selectivity level for the manuscript's current strength. Fallback offers a more forgiving route. Because these labels represent submission strategy, Best Fit is not always the journal with the highest raw fit percentage.
This score measures how fully the revised manuscript and response address the original reviewer comments: addressed concerns receive full credit, partially addressed concerns receive partial credit, and unresolved concerns receive none. Major concerns drive the displayed assessment when available.
It is primarily dependent on the original reviewer comments and the evidence in the revision—not the journal itself—although those comments may naturally reflect that journal's standards. It does not replace the revised manuscript's fresh quality score: a revision can address every comment yet still have broader weaknesses, or materially strengthen the paper without answering every comment.
How to use the scores: compare dimensions to identify the manuscript's limiting factors, use journal fit to plan where to submit, and use revision improvement to check response coverage. Treat changes across versions and the written reviewer reasoning as more informative than any single number.
EXAMPLE PRIMARY REPORT
This is an example of RefereeBio's primary report format. The manuscript, claims, journal context, scores, reviewer language, and report contents are fictional and are included only to demonstrate what a generated report can look like. It is not a real journal decision, publication forecast, endorsement, or assessment of an actual manuscript.
SAMPLE MANUSCRIPT REVIEW
Explore the reviewer reasoning, methods checks, journal-fit guidance, and ranked revision priorities RefereeBio prepares for life-science authors.
JOURNAL GUIDE
Referee compares your manuscript against a field-aware journal catalog, then frames a submission cascade: a credible reach, a strongest best-fit target, and fallback venues if the first submission fails.
Journal names are used only for submission-planning context. RefereeBio is independent and is not affiliated with, endorsed by, or operated by any listed journal, publisher, editor, or society.
A reach journal is selected when the manuscript may plausibly stretch upward if novelty, mechanism, and reporting are sharpened.
Best fit balances topic, audience, evidence depth, statistical confidence, and venue culture rather than simply chasing prestige.
Fallback journals are chosen to preserve scope alignment while reducing the likelihood of a lateral mismatch after a failed first round.
HOW RANKING WORKS
The ranking process uses manuscript content, stated field, target journal when provided, and journal-profile priors. Broadly, it weighs novelty, mechanism, technical strength, statistical rigor, figure clarity, scope fit, and likely reviewer culture. The exact scoring is intentionally internal; the product surfaces the practical result authors need: where to submit, why it fits, and what would make that submission stronger.
ABOUT REFEREEBIO
Authors can wait through editorial triage and a full review cycle only to learn that a control was missing, a conclusion was overstated, the target journal was wrong, or a reporting issue made the work harder to trust. Many of those problems could have been found while the manuscript was still in preparation, when they were faster and less expensive to fix.
THE TIMING PROBLEM
By the time reviewers identify a weak control, missing analysis, unclear novelty claim, or journal mismatch, the paper may already have spent weeks or months in a queue.
Minor reporting gaps, ambiguous methods, unsupported wording, incomplete literature context, or avoidable figure problems can erode confidence in otherwise useful work.
Different reviewers emphasize different risks. Authors often do not know which conceptual, technical, statistical, or presentation weakness will become decisive until the reports arrive.
AUGMENT PEER REVIEW—DO NOT REPLACE IT
RefereeBio is an author-controlled preparation layer. It identifies omissions, tests whether conclusions are justified, examines novelty and conceptual contribution, checks rigor and journal fit, maps relevant literature, improves clarity, and turns likely concerns into a structured revision checklist. The author decides which findings are valid, which revisions to make, and what ultimately leaves the lab.
It does not certify the science or stand in for a domain expert, statistician, editor, or reviewer. The point is to reserve human attention for judgment while using structured analysis to catch preventable weaknesses before formal peer review begins.
MAKE THE MANUSCRIPT AI-READY
A 2026 Evidence-Based Dentistry editorial published by Nature Portfolio reports that a global survey of more than 1,600 academics across 111 countries found that 53% of peer reviewers had used AI tools in their work. That does not make AI a reviewer, and it does not excuse undisclosed or confidentiality-breaking use. It does mean manuscripts increasingly enter an evaluation environment where AI-assisted scrutiny is already present.
RefereeBio helps authors prepare for that environment without removing human control: expose unclear claims, missing context, reporting weaknesses, statistical risks, and likely objections before submission, then let the research team verify the evidence and decide what to change.
Read “AI in peer review: the elephant in the editorial room” in Nature PortfolioBEYOND MECHANICAL COMMENTS
Writing quality matters, but polished prose cannot rescue an unclear contribution, weak controls, incomplete literature positioning, or conclusions that outrun the evidence. RefereeBio is designed to treat clarity as one layer of manuscript readiness—not the whole product.
RefereeBio asks what the manuscript adds, whether the central advance is distinguishable from prior work, how clearly the research gap is established, and whether the experiments support the conceptual claim. It surfaces novelty risks and competing interpretations rather than treating novelty as a keyword score.
The analysis examines controls, replicate definitions, methods, statistical choices, effect-size and uncertainty reporting, study limitations, and claim–evidence alignment. It flags causal or mechanistic language that is stronger than the experimental design can support.
Prior-art and novelty-risk analysis helps identify relevant work, missing context, nearby claims, and places where the manuscript may overstate what is new. This is a research aid, not an exhaustive systematic review; authors must verify every reference and interpretation.
RefereeBio compares topic, audience, evidence depth, selectivity, reporting rigor, and review culture to build a reach, best-fit, and fallback submission path. It also highlights journal-facing preparation risks rather than presenting fit as an acceptance probability.
Editing suggestions target logical flow, buried conclusions, ambiguous methods, overclaiming, figure and citation consistency, and section-specific expectations. The goal is not cosmetic rewriting; it is making the scientific argument easier to inspect and harder to misunderstand.
Findings become a ranked checklist organized around decision impact. Authors can distinguish essential scientific revisions from reporting improvements, track concerns across versions, and check whether reviewer comments were fully, partly, or not yet addressed.
PRIVACY IS AN ADOPTION REQUIREMENT
RefereeBio does not publish manuscripts, submit them to journals, sell manuscript content, or intentionally use private manuscripts to train public AI models. Uploaded review manuscripts are retained privately for revision under the author's deletion and retention controls, and generated reports remain tied to the authenticated account.
The current hosted service sends manuscript text to an external AI API to generate requested analysis. Open-source code can improve inspectability, but it does not make external processing equivalent to truly local or self-hosted inference. RefereeBio states that limitation directly.
Researchers at national laboratories, companies, government programs, or other sensitive settings should follow their institution's data-handling rules and should not upload export-controlled, classified, patient-identifying, contract-restricted, or otherwise regulated material without an appropriate written agreement. For teams whose policy requires on-premises or fully local inference, the hosted service may not yet be an appropriate processing path.
Read the complete manuscript security and retention detailsWHAT REFEREEBIO IS—AND IS NOT
RefereeBio helps researchers interrogate a draft before submission and organize the work of revision. It does not certify novelty, validate raw data, reproduce analyses, replace a domain expert or statistician, make an editorial decision, or promise that a journal will accept the manuscript. Authors remain responsible for research accuracy, literature verification, ethics, compliance, and every submitted claim.
Read our methodologyReview manuscript securityContact the team
METHODOLOGY
RefereeBio is purpose-built for the peer-review process. It independently evaluates manuscript quality, journal fit, reviewer variability, and revision progress as distinct dimensions — then surfaces the real limiting factors and gives authors a precise, actionable path to strengthen their submission.
FROM MANUSCRIPT TO REVISION PLAN
INDIVIDUAL MANUSCRIPT SCORES
The dimensions are diagnostic, not interchangeable. A manuscript can be technically strong but conceptually incremental, novel but statistically fragile, or compelling overall while poorly matched to a particular journal. The purpose is to show where the manuscript is limited and why.
What it asks: How unexpected, original, or field-advancing is the central contribution relative to the manuscript's own literature context?
What strengthens it: A clearly defined gap, a contribution distinguishable from nearby work, evidence that changes understanding rather than merely extending a known observation, and appropriately bounded priority claims.
What lowers confidence: Incremental extensions presented as breakthroughs, missing adjacent literature, novelty resting mainly on a new system or dataset, or claims that depend on an incomplete prior-art search.
What it asks: Does the work develop a meaningful model, framework, principle, or testable explanation—or does it stop at reporting a pattern?
What strengthens it: A coherent idea that connects the experiments, explains why the findings matter, generates predictions, and survives plausible alternative interpretations.
What lowers confidence: A collection of results without a unifying argument, a conceptual claim introduced only in the discussion, or a framework broad enough to explain any outcome.
What it asks: How directly does the evidence establish how or why an effect occurs, rather than showing association alone?
What strengthens it: Perturbation, rescue, temporal order, dose or dependency evidence, orthogonal validation, exclusion of competing mechanisms, and a causal chain supported at each important step.
What lowers confidence: Correlation described as causation, pathway language inferred from markers alone, a single perturbation with off-target ambiguity, or conclusions that skip intermediate evidence.
What it asks: How credible, reproducible, and well-controlled is the experimental execution?
What strengthens it: Appropriate positive and negative controls, independent validation, clear biological versus technical replication, transparent methods, suitable sample quality, and results that hold across relevant systems or conditions.
What lowers confidence: Missing controls, under-described procedures, validation in only one model, unclear exclusions, dependence on one assay, or reproducibility claims unsupported by the reported design.
What it asks: Are the analysis and reporting appropriate for the design, data structure, and strength of the claim?
What strengthens it: Correct experimental units, justified tests, adequate sample size, multiple-comparison handling, effect sizes and uncertainty, assumption checks where relevant, and transparent treatment of missing data and outliers.
What lowers confidence: Pseudoreplication, unclear n, selective significance reporting, p-values without effect magnitude, uncorrected repeated testing, or analyses that ignore pairing, nesting, censoring, or repeated measures.
What it asks: Do the figures clearly, completely, and logically carry the manuscript's evidentiary argument?
What strengthens it: A readable sequence, representative and quantitative evidence presented together, complete legends, visible uncertainty and sample information, consistent labels, and panels that directly support the claims made in the text.
What lowers confidence: Decorative rather than evidentiary panels, unreadable axes, missing controls, selective examples, unsupported schematic conclusions, figure–text mismatches, or key results available only in prose.
What it asks: Unlike the other dimensions, scope fit is journal-dependent: does this manuscript belong in the selected journal's audience, remit, article mix, and expected level of advance?
What strengthens it: Direct relevance to the journal's readers, the right balance of breadth and specialization, an article type the venue publishes, and evidence depth consistent with that journal's editorial expectations.
What lowers confidence: Topic overlap without audience relevance, a manuscript that is too narrow or too broad for the venue, a mismatch in article type, or a level of mechanistic and conceptual support below what that journal typically demands.
How to read the scores: use the pattern across dimensions to find the limiting factor. Changes across versions and the evidence behind each score are more informative than the absolute number. Scope fit should never be used as a substitute for reading the journal's current author instructions.
Explore journal selectionView a sample reportRead methodology FAQs
FEATURES
RefereeBio combines reviewer-style analysis, scientific editing, journal strategy, and revision checking in one private workflow for life-science authors.
Surface likely scientific, statistical, reporting, and editorial objections before journal submission.
Compare manuscript strength and scope with venue expectations to plan a practical submission cascade.
Improve clarity, precision, claim strength, and section-level argumentation with tracked suggestions.
Assess whether a revised manuscript and response address each major and minor reviewer concern.
PRE-SUBMISSION PEER REVIEW
RefereeBio pressure-tests life-science manuscripts with differentiated reviewer perspectives, methods and statistics checks, journal-fit context, and a ranked revision plan.
Test novelty, mechanism, controls, evidence strength, interpretation, and limitations.
Identify desk-triage risks and the concerns most likely to shape a review decision.
Translate critique into specific, ordered changes instead of a flat list of comments.
Reports stay in the author account and manuscripts are never submitted to journals by RefereeBio.
MANUSCRIPT EDITING
Section-aware suggestions target clarity, precision, overclaiming, logical flow, and reporting gaps while preserving the author's technical meaning.
Review proposed changes instead of replacing the manuscript with an opaque rewrite.
Align causal and mechanistic language with what the experiments actually establish.
Apply different standards to abstracts, methods, results, discussions, and cover letters.
Keep editing work connected to reviewer risks, journal strategy, and manuscript history.
REVISION CHECK
Compare reviewer comments with the revised manuscript and response letter to see which concerns appear addressed, partially addressed, or unresolved.
Track major and minor concerns against evidence in the revised manuscript.
Spot responses that answer rhetorically without making the requested analysis or manuscript change.
Structure point-by-point replies that are direct, specific, and easy for reviewers to verify.
Separate response completeness from the broader scientific quality of the revised paper.
CONTACT
Use this for product feedback, journal-catalog requests, institutional access, manuscript-review quality notes, billing questions, or partnership conversations.
If a review felt generic, missed the point, had a technical issue, or just didn't meet expectations — reach out. We'll re-run it or credit your account. Include your account email and a brief note on what went wrong.
Email us about itSend examples where the critique was unusually helpful, too generic, too harsh, or missed something obvious. These notes are the fastest path to a sharper product.
For labs, departments, graduate programs, writing centers, and research offices that want structured pre-submission review support.
Request additional venues, specialty fields, reviewer cultures, or journal families that should be represented in the catalog.
Referee supports preparation and revision planning. It does not replace collaborators, statisticians, journal policies, or direct communication with editors.
Include the journal, field, and whether you are asking about product behavior, access, privacy, billing, or manuscript-review quality.
SUBMISSION WORKSPACES
Each manuscript has one private workspace for its repeating cycle: review the PDF, edit the Word document, check a revision, and track journal submissions—with every report and version kept together.
JOIN A LAB GROUP
Enter the 8-character invite code your PI shared with you.
SAVED REPORTS
Review history turns one-off critique into a revision trail. Compare earlier and later runs, preserve decision logic for coauthors, and keep generated reports even after deleting uploaded manuscript files.
Run a revised manuscript and compare whether the highest-risk objections changed.
Keep the report, editor-style letter, ranked fixes, and export files for lab meetings or coauthor review.
Delete manuscript uploads while retaining the generated report history tied to your account.
ACCOUNT SETTINGS
Choose a strong password of at least 8 characters.
A verification code will be sent to your new address before the change takes effect.
Enter the 6-digit code sent to your new address:
You can cancel any time. Your plan stays active until the end of the current billing period. Use the billing portal to complete cancellation.
Download a complete JSON export of your account, all generated reviews, and reported outcomes. Use this to keep a local copy or move to another tool.
Permanently removes your account, all reviews, all manuscript edit sessions, all stored manuscript text, and all usage data from our servers. Downloaded exports are not affected. This cannot be undone.
SECURITY & PRIVACY
RefereeBio is a private manuscript-preparation tool. This page explains, in plain language, how manuscript content is handled and what you should not upload.
RefereeBio does not publish your manuscript, submit it to a journal, or make it visible to other users. Reports remain in your private account history.
The uploaded review file is stored privately for up to 90 days so a linked revision can reuse the original automatically. You can delete it immediately while keeping the report, or choose "Keep past 90 days" and later restore the automatic limit. Extracted manuscript text is not separately retained in the saved review settings.
Edit sessions may keep suggestion metadata longer when you select "Keep past 90 days," but their raw manuscript text and quoted source excerpts are still wiped 180 days from when the session was created. This window is extended for as long as an active subscription is held — the clock only runs while your plan is inactive or free. You can manually delete an edit session or its manuscript content at any time from My Papers, before the 180-day window is reached.
When generating AI analysis, your manuscript text is transmitted to Anthropic's API. Anthropic's standard data retention is approximately 30 days; they do not use API submissions to train models by default. RefereeBio does not intentionally use your manuscript to train public AI models or sell manuscript content.
Only you can access your manuscripts and reports through the product. No other users can view your account. The site operator — whoever runs this server — has database-level access to all stored content as part of normal server administration. This is standard for any web service. Content is not shared with third parties except as necessary to deliver the AI analysis you request.
Deleting a report wipes all stored reviewer comment text from that review. Deleting an edit session wipes raw text and manuscript excerpts from every suggestion immediately. Deleting your account removes all reviews, reports, edit sessions, and personal data — only payment records required for financial compliance are retained. Note: server backups, Stripe's payment records, Anthropic's 30-day API copies, and OpenAlex search-request records are outside the scope of in-app deletion.
Do not upload patient-identifying information, HIPAA-covered data, FERPA records, export-controlled data, classified material, or other specially regulated content unless a separate written agreement covers it. You are responsible for having the right to upload the manuscript and for independently checking every output against your data, journal instructions, approvals, and field standards.
Read full legal, privacy & responsible-use termsLEGAL + SECURITY
Plain-language terms for a private manuscript-preparation tool. Last updated July 4, 2026.
By creating an account, uploading content, purchasing a plan, or using RefereeBio, you agree to these terms, the pricing shown at checkout, and any written agreement that applies to your account.
If you do not agree, please do not use the service or upload content. We may ask you to accept material updates to these terms.
RefereeBio provides private manuscript-preparation tools, including simulated peer review, journal-fit analysis, revision planning, response-letter drafting, and editing support.
AI output is a helpful starting point, not a fact or professional advice: please check it independently. We do not submit manuscripts, contact journals, make editorial decisions, promise publication, certify statistics, or replace professional review.
Outputs are AI-generated simulations and drafting aids. They may be incomplete, inaccurate, outdated, overly cautious, too severe, too lenient, or inconsistent with a real journal's editorial process. Users must independently review all outputs before relying on them.
Reports are not official journal reviews, publication forecasts, editor decisions, professional statistical certification, legal advice, medical advice, research-integrity clearance, or endorsement by any journal, publisher, editor, reviewer, institution, or society.
Journal, publisher, editor, society, and indexing-service names may appear so authors can reason about submission strategy, venue expectations, and manuscript fit. Those names are used descriptively only.
RefereeBio is independent and is not affiliated with, endorsed by, sponsored by, certified by, or operated by any journal, publisher, editor, reviewer, society, university, funder, or indexing service named in the product.
You keep ownership of your manuscripts and other content. You give us a limited permission to process it to deliver the service, keep your account history, support you, secure the product, and meet legal obligations.
Please upload only content you are authorized to use. Journal and publisher names are used descriptively only; RefereeBio is independent of them.
Manuscripts are treated as confidential user content. RefereeBio does not claim ownership of uploaded manuscripts and does not intentionally use private manuscripts to train public AI models.
When third-party AI providers are configured, manuscript text may be transmitted to those providers solely to generate the requested analysis or editing output, subject to the provider terms, retention rules, and data-processing settings used in the deployed environment. Do not upload content unless you are comfortable with that processing path.
RefereeBio is designed so manuscript analysis runs through the server rather than exposing AI credentials in the browser. Saved uploads are stored in the application upload directory with restricted file permissions where supported, and generated reports are tied to authenticated accounts.
Users can delete uploaded manuscript files at any time while keeping generated reports. Users can also permanently delete an entire review record (file and report together) at any time. Uploaded review manuscripts are automatically removed after 90 days unless the user explicitly extends retention; extended retention can be turned off later. Saved manuscript edit sessions are deleted after 180 days (counted from when each session was created) unless the user keeps their suggestion metadata, but raw edit-session manuscript text is wiped after 180 days regardless; the 180-day window is paused for as long as the user holds an active subscription, and users can delete an edit session or its manuscript content at any time from My Papers. Temporary parsed-source files and exports are cleaned up on a shorter schedule.
Only the authenticated account owner can access their manuscripts and reports through the product interface. The site operator has database-level access as part of server administration, which is standard for any web service. RefereeBio does not submit manuscripts to journals, does not publish uploads, does not intentionally use private manuscripts to train public models, and does not sell manuscript content. No system is risk-free, so only upload manuscripts you are authorized to process.
RefereeBio may collect account information, uploaded or pasted manuscript content, reviewer comments, generated reports, usage events, device or IP-derived security signals, payment status from the payment provider, and support messages you send.
This information is used to provide requested features, authenticate users, save history, enforce usage limits, process payments, troubleshoot errors, improve product quality, prevent abuse, comply with law, and respond to support or privacy requests. RefereeBio does not sell manuscript content.
We collect the information needed to run and protect the service: account details, content and reports, usage and security signals, payment status, and messages you send us. We use it to provide features, authenticate accounts, process payments, prevent abuse, improve the product, and comply with law.
We do not sell manuscript content or intentionally use private manuscripts to train public AI models. EU/EEA and California users may have rights to access, correct, delete, export, or limit certain processing—contact us to exercise them.
RefereeBio uses a session cookie (referee_sid) to authenticate your account after sign-in. This cookie is HttpOnly, SameSite=Lax, and expires when you sign out or the session times out. This cookie is strictly necessary for authentication and is always set when you are signed in.
Optional analytics cookies: With your consent, RefereeBio loads Google Analytics (Google LLC) to collect anonymous usage statistics such as page views and session duration. No manuscript content, account email, or identifiable personal data is sent to Google Analytics. Analytics cookies are not set unless you click "Accept analytics" in the consent banner. You can change your choice at any time by clearing localStorage in your browser settings (key: analytics_consent) and reloading the page.
The application uses browser localStorage to preserve ephemeral UI state (such as the active journal tab or review tab position) within a single session, and to store your analytics consent preference. No personal data or manuscript content is persisted in localStorage. You can clear this data at any time through your browser's storage settings without affecting your account or saved reports.
RefereeBio is intended for users who are at least 18 years old. If you are under 18, you may only use the service with the involvement and consent of a parent or legal guardian. RefereeBio does not knowingly collect personal information from children under 13. If we learn that we have collected personal information from a child under 13, we will delete it promptly. If you believe a child under 13 has provided us with personal information, please contact us at the address below.
Unless RefereeBio signs a separate written agreement specifically covering regulated data, do not upload protected health information, patient-identifiable data, HIPAA-covered data, FERPA-covered student records, classified information, export-controlled technical data, government-restricted data, or other content subject to special legal or contractual handling requirements.
RefereeBio is not a HIPAA business associate by default and the service is not intended to store or process protected health information. De-identify manuscripts and remove patient identifiers, private subject data, confidential sponsor information, and restricted data before upload.
AI calls and uploads are handled server-side, saved reports require an account, and payment details are handled by our payment provider. No online service is risk-free; please do not upload protected health information, identifiable patient data, classified, export-controlled, or similarly restricted content without a separate written agreement.
Raw review manuscript files are normally removed after 90 days unless you explicitly extend retention; you may restore the automatic limit or delete the file at any time. Generated reports and manuscript edits are retained for 180 days from when they are produced (30 days on the free tier), after which they are no longer accessible; you can export or delete them sooner at any time. You can export or delete account data in settings; limited payment, backup, and security records may remain where law or operations require.
This retention window applies while RefereeBio is operating. In the unlikely event that RefereeBio discontinues the service, users who purchased reports or credits will be given advance notice through the product or account channel, with at least 180 days from that announcement to access and export their reports before removal, subject to applicable law and circumstances outside our control.
AI calls are made from the backend, uploads are handled server-side, account access is required for saved history, and payment details are handled through the configured payment provider rather than stored directly by RefereeBio.
No web application can promise absolute security. Do not upload material you are not authorized to process, and avoid uploading data subject to unusually strict controls unless your deployment has an appropriate data-processing agreement, access-control policy, and security review.
Use RefereeBio for your own draft evaluation, revision planning, and submission preparation. You remain responsible for research accuracy, ethics, permissions, disclosures, authorship, and journal-policy compliance.
RefereeBio can identify likely reporting gaps and revision priorities, but it does not replace collaborators, statisticians, compliance teams, IRBs, ethics committees, clinical judgment, professional editorial review, journal policy review, conflict-of-interest analysis, authorship analysis, or data-integrity review.
Users remain responsible for research accuracy, ethical approvals, statistical validity, disclosure statements, authorship decisions, human-subjects protections, animal-use approvals, and journal-policy compliance.
Payments are handled through Stripe. Subscriptions renew automatically until cancelled; cancellation stops the next renewal but does not ordinarily refund a completed billing period unless checkout terms or applicable law say otherwise. Taxes, bank fees, and currency conversion may apply.
Plan credits: Credits included with monthly or annual plans are valid for one month after they are issued. Pack credits: credits from a single-manuscript pack do not expire while RefereeBio continues to operate. If we ever plan to discontinue the service or retire unused pack credits, we will give affected users substantial advance notice and a reasonable opportunity to use them, subject to applicable law and circumstances outside our control.
Free accounts may receive a limited trial allowance. Paid tiers unlock continued access after the trial limit is used. RefereeBio may update feature availability, plan names, prices, or usage limits over time, but material changes should be communicated through the product or account channel when practical.
Access can be limited, suspended, or terminated for misuse, security concerns, chargebacks, fraud risk, unlawful use, or violation of these terms.
Cancellation and refund handling depends on the configured payment provider and any written plan terms shown at checkout. Cancellation generally stops future renewal; it may not automatically refund amounts already paid unless the applicable plan terms, payment-provider rules, or law require it.
Billing questions can be sent to the contact address below. Include the account email and the plan involved, but do not send full card numbers.
The service may be modified, interrupted, rate-limited, or discontinued. Features that depend on AI providers, payment providers, file parsing, model availability, or third-party infrastructure may fail or change without notice.
RefereeBio may update this legal page as the product changes. Continued use after an update means you accept the updated terms, subject to any rights you may have under applicable law.
To the fullest extent permitted by law, the service is provided “as is” and “as available,” without a promise of accuracy, uninterrupted availability, or any publication outcome. RefereeBio and its founders, officers, employees, and agents are not responsible for indirect or consequential loss, or for decisions made from AI output.
The total liability of RefereeBio and its founders, officers, employees, and agents for any claim relating to the service is limited to the greater of what you paid us in the six months before the claim or $100. Some places limit these exclusions, so they may not apply in full to you.
The service is provided "as is" and "as available." To the fullest extent permitted by law, RefereeBio and its founders, officers, employees, and agents disclaim all warranties, express or implied, including warranties of accuracy, reliability, availability, merchantability, fitness for a particular purpose, non-infringement, uninterrupted operation, error-free output, and that any manuscript outcome will improve.
Users are responsible for reviewing, validating, and deciding whether to use any generated text, recommendation, score, checklist, cover letter, response draft, or manuscript edit.
RefereeBio's name, software, design, analysis framework, and other service materials belong to RefereeBio or its licensors. Except for your content and rights expressly granted for your own reports, you may not copy, resell, scrape, reverse engineer, or use them to offer a competing service except where law permits.
You are responsible for your content and use of the service, and agree to defend, indemnify, and hold harmless RefereeBio and its founders, officers, employees, and agents from reasonable claims arising from your unauthorized content, unlawful use, or breach of these terms.
The RefereeBio name, product design, software, analysis framework, report structure, prompts, text, graphics, trade dress, and other service materials are owned by RefereeBio or its licensors and are protected by copyright, trademark, trade secret, and other laws.
Except for rights expressly granted to users for their own reports and uploaded content, all rights are reserved. You may not copy, reverse engineer, scrape, resell, frame, or offer a competing service using RefereeBio materials except where allowed by law or written permission.
Copyright © 2026 RefereeBio. Third-party names and trademarks belong to their owners and are used descriptively.
If you believe material in the service infringes your rights, email us enough information to identify the material, your claimed rights, and how to reach you.
These terms are governed by Connecticut law. A separate signed agreement controls if it conflicts with this page, and any unenforceable provision will be limited while the rest remains effective.
Please contact us first so we can try to resolve a concern informally. Where a claim must proceed, it must be brought individually in Connecticut's state or federal courts, except where applicable law says otherwise.
Questions about privacy, access, security, billing, responsible use, or account deletion can be sent to [email protected].
Please include your account email, a brief description of the issue, and whether your question concerns privacy, billing, security, responsible use, or product behavior.
ADMIN
Use these tools when a customer contacts you about a bad review, billing issue, or needs goodwill credit.
Grant bonus reviews
Granted reviews stack on top of the user's monthly limit and are consumed first when they go over.
Grant temporary tier access
Grant credit bundle (review + revision check + depth edit)
Grants N reviews, N revision checks, and N depth edits. Credits are consumed per use, non-expiring.
Grant gift month (redeemable anytime)
User can redeem from their Account → Plan & Billing page at any time for 30 days of that tier.
RESUBMISSION REVIEW
Upload your revised manuscript and the reviewer reports. Referee scores every comment, tracks what was addressed, and drafts your revision letter.
MANUSCRIPT EDITOR
Upload your manuscript as a Word document (.docx). Referee flags text-level issues and suggests careful wording changes. Science is never intentionally altered — verify all results before use.
Accept all tracked changes in your document before uploading — unresolved revisions will appear alongside Referee's suggestions in the exported file.
FEEDBACK & SUGGESTIONS
Rate your experience or send an idea directly to the team. Submissions are attached to your RefereeBio account email so we can follow up when useful.
Sending as your signed-in account
This will immediately and permanently remove the following from our servers:
Payment records may be retained where required by law. Downloaded exports are not affected.
This action is permanent and cannot be undone.
To confirm, type your email address:
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TERMS + MANUSCRIPT SECURITY
RefereeBio is a private manuscript-preparation aid. It generates simulated review, journal-fit, revision, statistical-reporting, cover-letter, response-letter, and editing support. It does not submit manuscripts, communicate with journals, promise publication, or provide official journal guidance.
Outputs are AI-generated simulations and drafting aids. They may be incomplete, inaccurate, outdated, too severe, too lenient, or inconsistent with an actual journal process. They are not official journal reviews, publication forecasts, editorial decisions, professional statistical certification, legal advice, medical advice, research-integrity clearance, or endorsement by any journal or publisher.
You keep ownership of your manuscript and uploaded content. RefereeBio processes it to provide requested features, save account history, troubleshoot errors, secure the service, enforce usage limits, and comply with obligations. AI requests are made from the server rather than exposing AI credentials in your browser. Uploaded manuscript files can be deleted while generated reports remain available. RefereeBio does not intentionally use private manuscripts to train public AI models and does not sell manuscript content.
Manuscript text may be transmitted to configured AI, payment, hosting, email, storage, security, and analytics/service providers as needed to operate the service, subject to their terms and data-processing settings. No web service can promise absolute security.
Do not upload protected health information, patient-identifiable data, HIPAA-covered data, FERPA-covered student records, classified information, export-controlled technical data, or other specially regulated data unless RefereeBio has signed a separate written agreement covering that data. RefereeBio is not a HIPAA business associate by default.
You must have the right to upload and process the content you provide. You may not impersonate journals, editors, or reviewers; present simulated reports as official journal review; upload unauthorized content; use RefereeBio for harassment, fraud, journal manipulation, plagiarism, fabricated research, policy evasion, or misrepresentation; or rely on output without independent review.
Paid access is handled through the configured payment provider. Subscriptions may renew until cancelled. Feature availability, pricing, limits, and plans may change. Access may be limited or terminated for misuse, security concerns, fraud risk, chargebacks, unlawful use, or violation of these terms.
The service is provided "as is" and "as available" without warranties of accuracy, reliability, availability, merchantability, fitness for a particular purpose, non-infringement, uninterrupted operation, or error-free output. To the fullest extent permitted by law, the total liability of RefereeBio and its founders, officers, employees, and agents is limited to the greater of what you paid in the six months before a claim or $100, and neither RefereeBio nor its founders, officers, employees, or agents are responsible for indirect, consequential, special, punitive, lost-profit, publication-outcome, research, compliance, or editorial-decision damages. You agree to defend, indemnify, and hold harmless RefereeBio and its founders, officers, employees, and agents from claims arising from your content, misuse, legal violations, unauthorized uploads, regulated data, IP infringement, or misrepresentation of generated output.
You may request access, correction, deletion, export, or other applicable privacy choices by contacting RefereeBio. Some requests may be limited by verification, security, legal, payment, backup, or operational requirements. The full Legal, Privacy, and Responsible Use page is available from the Legal navigation tab.
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