Signals
Signals is a London-based research integrity platform that uses its Signals Data Graph and AI to evaluate scientific manuscripts and publications for issues like papermill fraud, hallucinated references, and image manipulation, serving scientific publishers through integrations with ScholarOne and Editorial Manager.
- Company typePrivate
- Founded2024
- HeadquartersLondon, United Kingdom
- Headcount1–10
- GTM typeB2B
- OfferingSoftware
What Signals does
Signals (Research Signals Limited) is a London-based research integrity technology company founded in 2024 that builds AI- and network-analysis-driven evaluation tools for scientific publishers, institutions, and researchers. The company's core asset is the Signals Data Graph, a proprietary knowledge network containing billions of nodes of publication data — including over 100 million publications, citation links, author connections, and institutional affiliations — used to evaluate research integrity at both manuscript and published-article stages. Its primary product, Signals Manuscript Checks, automatically screens submissions for integrity issues including hallucinated references, tortured phrases, risky email domains, problematic institutional affiliations, and image manipulation (via the Imagetwin partnership), and is integrated natively into the two dominant editorial management systems (ScholarOne and Editorial Manager).
The company's go-to-market combines enterprise field sales to publishers with product-led growth through self-serve demo dashboards and a direct manuscript upload path, while a separate Signals Badge product distributes integrity signals to researcher-facing discovery platforms including NCI/NanCI, Cassyni, Litmaps, Global Campus, and Hum. Revenue is generated through annual SaaS subscriptions priced per publisher portfolio size and submission volume, plus professional services via its Integrity Intelligence consulting offering and licensing/royalty arrangements for Badge integrations. Sleuth AI, launched July 2025, layers a generative AI assistant on top of the platform to enable interactive manuscript investigation with explainability.
Signals serves over a dozen leading publishers including FASEB (Federation of American Societies for Experimental Biology) and JMIR Publications as named enterprise customers, and is backed by $1.1 million in disclosed seed funding from strategic investors ACS Publications (American Chemical Society) and Enago, alongside the Scholarly Angels angel syndicate. The company is led by co-founders Andrew Preston (also co-founder of Publons and Cassyni, ex-Web of Science product director), Elliott Lumb (founder of PeerRef, ex-Frontiers strategy), and Nicko Goncharoff (Commercial Lead), with a small team of fewer than ten people operating from London.
Signals firmographics
Firmographics- Name
- Signals
- Legal name
- Research Signals Limited
- Website
- https://research-signals.com
- Company type
- Private
- Founded year
- 2024
- Operating status
- Operating
- Headcount range
- 1–10 employees
- Short description
- Signals is a London-based research integrity platform that uses its Signals Data Graph and AI to evaluate scientific manuscripts and publications for issues like papermill fraud, hallucinated references, and image manipulation, serving scientific publishers through integrations with ScholarOne and Editorial Manager.
- Ownership category
- akta.pro rank
Signals industry classification
Industry- Product category
- Research Integrity Software
- NAICS
- Management, Scientific, and Technical Consulting Services (5416)
- SIC
- Services-Management Consulting Services (8742)
- akta.pro primary industry
- Academic Integrity & Authenticity Analytics (Plagiarism/AI-Use Detection Signals) (EDAFAFAI)
- akta.pro secondary industries
- AI-Generated Content Detection & Authorship Verification (EDAFALAB), Compliance & Risk Intelligence Publishing (KYC/AML, ESG, Cyber, Privacy) (MPAJACAC)
Keywords
Where Signals is headquartered
LocationHeadquarters
- HQ city
- London
- HQ country
- United Kingdom
- HQ region
- Europe
Offices1 record
Markets served
Signals business model
Business model- GTM type
- B2B
- Offering type
- Software
- Cost components
- Personnel, Technology or R&D, Marketing or Sales, Operations, Infrastructure
Revenue model
- Signals Manuscript Checks: SaaS platform providing automated manuscript evaluation and research integrity checks for publishers. Subscription-based model with pricing based on usage volume and feature tier.
- Integrity Intelligence Reports & Consulting: Data-driven reports and consulting projects for publishers to understand research integrity risks and opportunities, including workshops on best practices and RI workflow optimization.
- Signals Badge Integration: Integration of Signals evaluations into research discovery platforms, potentially offered as a licensing or white-label arrangement to platform partners.
Pricing tiers
| Model | Billing | Price |
|---|---|---|
| Subscription | Annual | Enterprise subscription with customized pricing |
Go-to-market motion2 records
Distribution channels5 records
Marketing channels9 records
Signals product offering
Product offeringCore offering
Signals combines networked research data (the Signals Data Graph, containing over 100 million publications and billions of nodes), expert knowledge, and AI to provide transparent, dynamic evaluations of scholarly publications and manuscripts. Its core product, Signals Manuscript Checks, automatically screens manuscript submissions for research integrity issues (papermill content, hallucinated references, tortured phrases, risky author email domains, institution integrity risks, and image manipulation) and is integrated into publisher workflows through ScholarOne and Editorial Manager. The company also offers the Publisher Dashboard for portfolio-level journal analytics, Sleuth AI for interactive manuscript investigation, the Signals Badge for credibility signaling on partner research platforms, and Integrity Intelligence consulting services.
Product overview
Signals is a research evaluation platform that combines networked research data, expert knowledge, and AI to create deep evaluations of every publication and manuscript. The core platform is built around the Signals Data Graph which networks billions of nodes of publication data. The main product offering is Signals Manuscript Checks, which provides automated evaluations of submissions integrated into editorial workflows via ScholarOne and Editorial Manager. Related products include the Publisher Dashboard for portfolio-level monitoring, Sleuth AI for AI-powered manuscript investigation, the Signals Badge for external integration into discovery platforms, Expert Contributions for community insights, and Article Collections for custom analysis. The Integrity Intelligence service provides consulting and custom reports alongside the software products.
Differentiator
Problem solved
Functional benefit
Products and services
- Signals Manuscript Checks Automated evaluation product that screens manuscript submissions for research integrity issues (authorship, references, content analysis, image integrity) at the point of submission, providing publishers with transparent, dynamic integrity checks and real-time dashboards. Designed for scientific publishers using ScholarOne or Editorial Manager.
- Publisher Dashboard Dynamic, transparent integrity evaluations across all of a publisher's published output, with alerts for changes in articles as they are cited and engaged with, and journal-to-portfolio-level analytics for benchmarking research integrity performance.
- Signals Data Graph Proprietary network of publication data that stores and analyzes the world's research, combining networked research data with expert knowledge to evaluate every article and manuscript at every stage of the publishing process.
- Sleuth AI AI-powered research integrity assistant that turns hours of manual manuscript analysis into minutes of intelligent, interactive exploration, automatically detecting key signals including missing conflict-of-interest statements, funding and ethical approval indicators, generative-AI misuse, and erroneous sections.
- Signals Badge Visual indicator of Signals' research integrity assessment (Looks Good, Caution, or Alert) that integrates into research discovery platforms, helping researchers quickly evaluate the credibility of publications and citations in their workflows.
- Article Collections Customizable feature for evaluating, aggregating, and analyzing articles at any level, enabling analysis of special issues, editorial board member patterns, systematic reviews, funder compliance reporting, and similar curated use cases.
- Integrity Intelligence (Consulting & Reports) Data-driven cycle of understanding, solution, and monitoring for publishers, including custom reports, consulting projects, and workshops on best practices and research integrity workflow optimization.
Quantifiable outcome
- 11% invalid reference rate detected in AI-generated manuscripts (vs 2% for some frontier models)
- +1 more outcomes
Companies that use Signals
Customer profileNamed customers4 records
Segments3 records
Ideal customer profiles3 records
Signals technology and API
TechnologyTechnology focussed Yes
API detail
- Has API
- No
- API docs
- API detail
Core technology
AI maturity
App detail
Integration5 records
AI capability8 records
Feature11 records
Signals partnerships and signals
Strategic signalPartnerships
Twelve partnerships are on record, tiered core, strategic and minor.
- JMIR PublicationscoreLeading publisher in digital medicine and health technology using Signals Manuscript Checks across their entire portfolio. Goal is ensuring trustworthy research reaches the community with quality and integrity assurance.
- HumstrategicCollaboration where Signals Data Graph powers Hum's Alchemist Review's reviewer recommender, enabling faster, more accurate reviewer identification and selection. Integration supports identifying potential reviewers and filtering/scoring them based on publication quality.
- ImagetwinstrategicPartnership brings industry-leading image analysis into Signals Manuscript Checks. Publishers can now detect image duplications, manipulations, and AI-generated images automatically within the Signals interface alongside existing Signals analysis.
- Aries Systems CorporationcorePartnership to integrate Signals Manuscript Checks into Editorial Manager, the leading manuscript submission and peer review tracking system. Empowers journals to identify and prevent problematic manuscripts within their existing editorial workflow.
- FASEBcoreThe Federation of American Societies for Experimental Biology selected Signals Manuscript Checks to strengthen research integrity across its journal portfolio including its flagship The FASEB Journal. Following successful trial, rolling out to all journal submissions.
- Global CampusstrategicPartnership integrates Signals Badge into Global Campus, enabling users to quickly evaluate credibility of researchers' prior work and helping publishers select high-quality, trustworthy reviewers for peer review.
- NanCI (National Cancer Institute)strategicPartnership with NCI's mobile and web application allows users to see Signals evaluations of publications directly within the app, assessing research integrity instantly.
- CassynistrategicPartnership integrates Signals Badge to provide verifiable insights into credibility of works referenced in seminars, helping audiences evaluate research being discussed and exposing potential integrity issues.
- LitmapsstrategicCollaboration allows researchers to explore scholarly literature using interactive citation networks while seeing Signals evaluations within those networks, enabling informed decisions on which publications to build upon.
- United2ActminorSignals became a signatory of United2Act, an industry initiative for collective action against paper mills protecting the integrity of the scholarly record.
- Editorial ManagercoreIntegration with Aries Systems' Editorial Manager platform enables automatic manuscript evaluation at point of submission with color-coded evaluations appearing directly in the EM interface.
- ScholarOnecoreIntegration of Signals Manuscript Checks into ScholarOne manuscripts submission workflow. Evaluations appear in ScholarOne with links to Signals platform for reviewing potentially problematic papers.
Scale indicators7 records
Recent moves6 records
Expansion highlights5 records
Signals competitors and assessment
Company assessmentOthers
- Aries Systems (Editorial Manager): Aries Systems' Editorial Manager is the leading manuscript submission and peer-review system and is a Signals integration partner. As a workflow platform with deep publisher relationships, it is an ecosystem enabler but could in theory build or integrate competing integrity checks.
- Crossref: Crossref operates the DOI registry and reference-linking infrastructure used by scholarly publishers; Signals' invalid-reference detection relies on this infrastructure. Crossref is an ecosystem enabler rather than a competitor, but its Similarity Check service competes with plagiarism tools.
- Retraction Watch: Retraction Watch is a community-driven database of retracted publications that Signals references and integrates into its data graph (Problematic Paper Screener). It is an adjacent ecosystem player whose sleuthing community partly overlaps with Signals' Expert Contributions.
Direct peers
- Originality.ai: Originality.ai provides AI-content and plagiarism detection targeted at publishers, agencies, and educators, competing for the same AI-text detection budgets that Signals addresses for scholarly publishers.
- Copyleaks: Copyleaks offers AI-content detection and plagiarism checking used by academic publishers, institutions, and enterprises, overlapping directly with Signals' Sleuth AI and integrity analytics capabilities for detecting AI-generated and manipulated text.
- GPTZero: GPTZero is an AI-content detection platform widely used in education and publishing to identify AI-generated text, addressing the same AI-misuse problem Signals detects via its Sleuth AI and tortured-phrases signals.
Emerging players
- Cactus Communications (Enago): Enago is a major editorial and research support services provider that invested in Signals and formed a reciprocal partnership; its parent Cactus Communications offers a wide suite of author services and is an adjacent competitor/enabler in research integrity workflows.
- Imagetwin: Imagetwin focuses on image integrity (duplications, manipulations, AI-generated figures) in scientific manuscripts. Signals partnered with Imagetwin to embed image checks into Manuscript Checks, making it both a partner and the closest adjacent capability in image integrity.
- Proofig: Proofig provides AI-driven image integrity checking for scientific publications, addressing overlapping concerns about figure manipulation and duplication that Signals addresses through its Imagetwin integration.
Broad incumbents
- Turnitin (iThenticate): Turnitin's iThenticate product is the dominant plagiarism/originality check used by scholarly publishers, providing a directly overlapping capability to Signals Manuscript Checks for screening submissions, though Turnitin serves a much broader market across education and academia.
Market position
Strengths5 records
Weaknesses4 records
Competitive moat5 records
Key risks6 records
Key highlights7 records
Customer concentration
Signals social profiles
Digital presenceSignals compliance and trust
Trust signalCompliance1 record
Signals financial estimates
Financial estimateRevenue estimate
Valuation estimate
Signals leadership team
Management profileNumber of profiles
Profiles6 records
Signals funding detail
Funding detailFunding overview
Funding rounds1 record
Investors3 records
Funding detail is available on the Subscription and Enterprise plan.Contact sales →
Signals M&A and investment
M&A and investmentM&A
Investments
M&A and investment is available on the Subscription and Enterprise plan.Contact sales →
Frequently asked questions about Signals
What does Signals do?
Signals combines networked research data (the Signals Data Graph, containing over 100 million publications and billions of nodes), expert knowledge, and AI to provide transparent, dynamic evaluations of scholarly publications and manuscripts. Its core product, Signals Manuscript Checks, automatically screens manuscript submissions for research integrity issues (papermill content, hallucinated references, tortured phrases, risky author email domains, institution integrity risks, and image manipulation) and is integrated into publisher workflows through ScholarOne and Editorial Manager. The company also offers the Publisher Dashboard for portfolio-level journal analytics, Sleuth AI for interactive manuscript investigation, the Signals Badge for credibility signaling on partner research platforms, and Integrity Intelligence consulting services.
Is Signals a public or private company?
Signals is a private company. It is classified as venture growth investor backed and is currently operating.
When was Signals founded?
Signals was founded in 2024. It employs 1 to 10 people.
Where is Signals based?
Signals is headquartered in London, United Kingdom, in the Europe region.
How does Signals make money?
Three revenue lines are on record. Signals Manuscript Checks are the primary driver. The others are integrity Intelligence Reports & Consulting and signals Badge Integration.
Who are Signals's main competitors?
Others on record are Aries Systems (Editorial Manager), Crossref and Retraction Watch. Direct peers are Originality.ai, Copyleaks and GPTZero. Emerging players are Cactus Communications (Enago), Imagetwin and Proofig. Turnitin (iThenticate) is listed as a broad incumbent.
Does Signals have an API?
No public API is recorded for Signals.
What industry is Signals in?
Signals's product category is Research Integrity Software. Its primary akta.pro industry code is EDAFAFAI, Academic Integrity & Authenticity Analytics (Plagiarism/AI-Use Detection Signals), with a secondary code of EDAFALAB, AI-Generated Content Detection & Authorship Verification. Its NAICS code is 5416 and its SIC code is 8742.