Before you reformat a manuscript for a new journal, you need to know exactly what the journal will expect. Livewrite's Automatic Submission Checklist reads your manuscript, compares it against the target journal's author guidelines, and hands you a short, ranked list of what's already done and what still needs fixing - usually in under a minute.
It's the piece most researchers do by hand right now: opening a PDF of author guidelines in one window, the manuscript in another, and checking abstract word counts, required statements, figure resolution, and a dozen other things one at a time. We built this feature so you don't have to.
What it does
Upload your Word manuscript, pick a target journal and article type, and the checklist engine evaluates your document against every submission requirement that journal publishes - journal-wide rules and article-type-specific rules together. Each requirement is checked individually, with reasoning you can read and sources you can verify. When the evaluation finishes you get an interactive dashboard plus a downloadable PDF, grouped into three sections:
- Already Completed - requirements your manuscript already meets, so you don't waste time worrying about them.
- Action Required - specific things to fix before you submit, with the reason and a concrete suggestion for each one.
- Submission Instructions - procedural items for the submission portal itself: cover letter required, file formats, supplementary material rules, and similar.
Instead of a 200-item generic checklist, the engine filters to the requirements that actually matter for your manuscript and target journal. A typical report surfaces somewhere between five and fifteen items you genuinely need to act on.
What it catches
A few examples of the kinds of issues the checklist flags, all lifted directly from real journal guidelines our system reads:
- Formatting: abstract word count over the limit, missing line numbers, incorrect heading structure, structured vs. unstructured abstract mismatch, font and margin violations.
- Content: missing data availability statement, missing conflict-of-interest declaration, missing ethics approval, keyword count outside the allowed range, author affiliations formatted incorrectly on the title page.
- File preparation: figures below the journal's minimum DPI, tables embedded when they should be separate files, unsupported file types, supplementary material naming conventions.
- Procedural: cover letter required, specific submission portal steps, mandatory accompanying documents.
Each flagged item comes with a specific reason ("the abstract is 312 words, exceeding the 250-word limit by 62 words") and a concrete suggestion, not a vague "review your abstract." That difference is the whole point: you should be able to act on the checklist immediately without re-reading the journal's guidelines.
Where it fits in the manuscript workflow
The Automatic Submission Checklist tool is perfect for researchers who have finished writing their manuscript and chosen their ideal journal. Run the checklist to see what the target journal needs and get a custom-tailored checklist to help you prepare your document for review.
For authors coming off a rejection from a different journal, this is especially useful: the requirements for the new target journal are often subtly different from the last one, and the checklist makes those differences visible in seconds instead of hours.
Supported journals
Livewrite's journal database supports automated checklist generation for hundreds of journals in medicine and the life sciences. We're adding new journals every day and if your target journal isn't already supported, you can simply request it in the app and we will prioritize adding it. Article-type-specific rules (original research, systematic review, case report, editorial, and so on) are tracked separately from journal-wide rules, so a case report aimed at a journal that also publishes clinical trials is evaluated against the right set of requirements.
Try it
You can see the full list of manuscript preparation tools on our features overview, or jump straight to this feature, automatic journal reformatting, to see how our tools work together end-to-end. If you're staring down a submission deadline right now, the checklist is the fastest way to find out what's between you and the submit button.
