Paperpal, an AI-powered English academic paper writing support tool developed by Cactus Communications, a researcher support service provider, has been selected for a trial implementation at Nagaoka University of Technology (Nagaoka City, Niigata Prefecture) for eight months, from August to March 2027. The purpose is to improve the quality of English academic papers and free up research time. The decision on whether to implement the tool in subsequent years will be based on the results of the trial implementation.
This support tool offers accurate and contextually appropriate English expressions, very similar to those provided by professional proofreaders, when writing English academic papers. It also assists authors with rewriting sentences, adjusting word counts, and searching for citations. It was developed based on published paper data and the knowledge accumulated over 20 years by experienced academic proofreaders of the English proofreading brand "Editage."
Nagaoka University of Technology will conduct an eight-month trial implementation with 45 selected students of the JST Next Generation Researcher Challenging Research Program (SPRING) to verify the effectiveness of the system and to investigate its usage among researchers and doctoral students in order to decide whether to implement it on a full scale.
Writing papers in English, such as for submission to international academic journals, is an essential task for researchers, but the time spent writing can make it difficult to secure sufficient research time. Some students are intimidated by English and hesitate to write papers in English. Nagaoka University of Technology is piloting support tools to address these challenges.
