Towards Automatic Formal Feedback on Scientific Documents

This paper introduces IPPOLIS Write, an open source, web-based tool designed to provide automated feedback on the formal aspects of scientific documents.Aimed at addressing the variability in writing and language skills among scientists and the challenges faced by supervisors in providing consistent feedback on student theses, IPPOLIS Write integrates several open source tools and custom implementations to analyze documents for a range of formal issues, including grammatical errors, consistent introduction of acronyms, comparison of literature entries with several databases, referential integrity of figures and tables, and consistent link access dates.IPPOLIS Write generates reports with statistical summaries and annotated documents that highlight specific issues and suggest improvements while also providing additional background information where appropriate.To evaluate its effectiveness, a qualitative assessment is conducted using a small but diverse dataset of bachelor's and master's theses sourced from arXiv.Our findings demonstrate the tool's potential to enhance the quality of scientific documents by providing targeted and consistent feedback, thereby aiding both students and professionals in refining their document preparation skills.