Automated paper checking using NLP machine

learning model
* Note: Sub-titles are not captured in Xplore and should not be used

Omkar nikam Rigveda Aniket Mhatre Varad Rajendra Adhav

KIT’s College of Engineering Kolhapur KIT’s College of Engineering Kolhapur KIT’s College of Engineering Kolhapur
Maharashtra, India Maharashtra, India Maharashtra, India
[email protected] [email protected] [email protected]

Harshal Shamrao Ballal Dr Uma Gurav Dr Ashish Patil

KIT’s College of Engineering Kolhapur KIT’s College of Engineering Kolhapur KIT’s College of Engineering Kolhapur
Maharashtra, India Maharashtra, India Maharashtra, India
[email protected] [email protected]

Netra Nivas
KIT’s College of Engineering Kolhapur
Maharashtra, India

Abstract—Automated paper checking using Natural Language automated system to streamline paper assessment has become
Processing (NLP) and machine learning (ML) offers an innovative critical. Automated paper checking, powered by advancements
solution to streamline the evaluation process in academic and in Natural Language Processing (NLP) and Machine Learning
professional settings. This study presents a model designed to
assess textual content in academic papers, focusing on key (ML), offers a promising solution to address these challenges.
parameters such as content relevance, grammatical accuracy, NLP, a subfield of artificial intelligence, enables machines
coherence, and originality. The proposed system leverages NLP to process and analyze human language with remarkable accu-
techniques, including tokenization, semantic analysis, and topic racy. Recent developments in NLP techniques, coupled with
modeling, alongside supervised ML algorithms to analyze and robust ML models, have revolutionized how textual data is
grade submissions.
A dataset of annotated academic papers was used to train understood and evaluated. From extracting semantic meaning
the model, enabling it to learn scoring patterns based on to identifying grammatical errors and evaluating coherence,
predefined rubrics. The system integrates feature extraction NLP-based systems are well-suited to handle the multifaceted
methods to capture structural, syntactic, and semantic elements aspects of paper evaluation. These systems can assess various
of text, ensuring a comprehensive evaluation. Experimental dimensions, such as relevance to a given topic, structural
results demonstrate high accuracy in grading, with significant
agreement rates compared to human evaluators. The automation organization, linguistic quality, originality, and adherence to
reduces subjectivity, speeds up the review process, and ensures specific guidelines or rubrics.
consistency in assessments. This research explores the development of an automated
This approach has broad applications in educational institu- paper-checking system leveraging NLP and ML methodolo-
tions, research journals, and corporate training programs. Future gies. The system incorporates techniques such as text pre-
enhancements include incorporating advanced NLP models for
deeper semantic understanding and expanding the system to
processing, semantic similarity analysis, sentiment detection,
support multilingual evaluations. The study underscores the and topic modeling to provide a comprehensive assessment of
potential of combining NLP and ML for efficient, fair, and academic papers. By training on a dataset of annotated papers,
scalable paper checking solutions. the model learns to score submissions effectively, emulating
human evaluators while eliminating bias and inefficiency.
I. I NTRODUCTION The proposed solution aims to ensure consistency, fairness,
The manual evaluation of academic papers is a time- and scalability in paper evaluation. Beyond academia, it holds
intensive and subjective process, often fraught with inconsis- potential applications in industries where textual evaluations
tencies and inefficiencies. With the increasing volume of aca- play a critical role, such as legal document review, content
demic and professional submissions in educational institutions, grading, and corporate training. Through this study, we aim to
research journals, and corporate environments, the need for an demonstrate the feasibility and benefits of automating paper
checking using NLP and ML, paving the way for a more
Identify applicable funding agency here. If none, delete this. efficient and reliable evaluation framework.
 II. R ELATED W ORKS techniques to create a comprehensive system capable of per-
forming multi-dimensional paper evaluations.
The field of automated paper evaluation has garnered sig- III. M ETHODOLOGY
nificant attention in recent years, driven by advancements in
Natural Language Processing (NLP) and Machine Learning
(ML). Numerous studies have explored various dimensions of
automated assessment, including plagiarism detection, gram-
mar correction, semantic analysis, and rubric-based grading.
This section reviews the existing literature on automated paper
checking and highlights the methodologies and technologies
employed in these studies.
One of the foundational areas of automated paper evaluation
is **plagiarism detection**, with tools like Turnitin and Gram-
marly setting benchmarks for identifying textual similarities.
These tools rely on string-matching algorithms and semantic
similarity techniques to compare submitted documents against
extensive databases. Research by [Smith et al., 2020] in-
troduced more advanced methods, utilizing Word2Vec and Dataset sample image
BERT embeddings for semantic-level plagiarism detection, The methodology for developing an automated paper-
which improved the system’s ability to detect paraphrased or checking system involves leveraging Natural Language Pro-
contextually similar content. cessing (NLP) and Machine Learning (ML) techniques to
evaluate academic papers based on multiple criteria, including
Automated grading systems have also seen notable progress,
grammar, semantics, structure, and adherence to predefined
particularly in educational contexts. Studies by [Shermis
rubrics. The workflow is divided into several stages:
Hamner, 2013] evaluated systems like E-rater (developed by
1. Data Collection and Preprocessing : - Dataset Selec-
ETS), which employ rule-based and statistical models to
tion: Academic papers, essays, and research documents are
grade essays. However, recent approaches have moved towards
collected from publicly available sources, including academic
deep learning architectures, such as recurrent neural networks
repositories and online forums. Annotated datasets like ASAP
(RNNs) and transformer-based models, to evaluate coherence,
(Automated Student Assessment Prize) and publicly avail-
organization, and argumentation quality. Research by [Dong
able corpora are also utilized for training and validation.
Zhang, 2021] demonstrated how pre-trained models like BERT
Preprocessing : - Text Tokenization:Splitting the document
and RoBERTa can enhance the accuracy of automated grading
into sentences and words for analysis. - Stopword Removal:
systems by capturing contextual relationships in text.
Eliminating irrelevant words such as ”the,” ”is,” and ”and.”
Another area of focus has been **text quality assessment**, - Normalization:Converting text to lowercase and handling
where linguistic features such as grammar, spelling, and style punctuations and special characters.
are evaluated. Tools like Grammarly and ProWritingAid utilize 2. System Architecture : The system is designed as a
NLP techniques to identify grammatical errors and suggest modular pipeline to evaluate papers across various dimensions:
corrections. Studies by [Chen et al., 2022] proposed integrat- a) Grammar and Syntax Checking:** - A transformer-
ing Transformer models to improve context-aware grammar based model (e.g., BERT or T5) fine-tuned for grammar
correction, outperforming traditional rule-based approaches. correction is deployed to identify errors in syntax, spelling,
Semantic similarity analysis and topic modeling have been and punctuation. - Rule-based methods are integrated to detect
integral to evaluating the relevance and originality of academic specific structural issues, such as sentence fragments or run-
submissions. Techniques such as Latent Dirichlet Allocation ons.
(LDA) and neural embedding models have been widely ap- b) Semantic Analysis: - A pre-trained model like Sentence-
plied to assess topic coherence and alignment. [Mikolov et BERT (SBERT) is used to assess semantic similarity and
al., 2013] introduced Word2Vec, which was further built upon coherence between sections, ensuring logical flow and topic
by transformer models like BERT to achieve higher accuracy alignment. - Text embeddings are generated to compare para-
in semantic similarity tasks. Recent work by [Yang et al., graphs and identify redundant or off-topic content.
2023] demonstrated the use of sentence embeddings for cross- c) Structural Evaluation: - The system checks for standard
document similarity analysis, improving the detection of off- paper components (e.g., abstract, introduction, methods, re-
topic content. sults, conclusion). - A rule-based NLP model ensures that
While existing systems address various aspects of automated sections follow conventional academic writing norms and the
paper checking, they often operate in isolation, focusing on flow adheres to logical progression.
specific tasks rather than providing a holistic evaluation. d) Rubric-Based Assessment: - Predefined rubrics are en-
This research seeks to integrate these methodologies into a coded as scoring matrices, capturing dimensions like argument
unified framework, leveraging state-of-the-art NLP and ML strength, evidence quality, originality, and writing style. - A
classification model predicts whether the content meets rubric- In summary, the results affirm the viability of deploying
specific thresholds. NLP and machine learning techniques for automated academic
3. Model Training and Optimization : - Model Selection: paper checking. The developed system not only simplifies
Pre-trained transformer models (e.g., BERT, GPT) are fine- the process of quality assurance in academic writing but also
tuned on academic writing datasets. - Loss Function: Specific presents a scalable and efficient solution for enhancing the
tasks use task-appropriate loss functions: - Grammar correc- rigor of scholarly communication.
tion: Binary cross-entropy loss. - Semantic evaluation: Cosine
similarity loss. V. C ONCLUSION
4. Evaluation Metrics: The performance of the system is In this study, we proposed an NLP-based machine learning
assessed using the following metrics: - Accuracy: For grammar approach for the automated checking of academic papers,
correction and structural checks. - F1-Score: To evaluate focusing on improving efficiency and maintaining high-quality
rubric-based classification tasks. - BLEU Score: For assessing academic standards. By leveraging advanced machine learning
language quality and semantic similarity. - Mean Squared techniques, including a pre-trained transformer model like
Error (MSE): For predicting numerical rubric scores. BERT, the system demonstrated its ability to identify structural
5. Testing and Deployment : - A separate test set is used to inconsistencies, grammatical errors, and citation anomalies in
evaluate the generalizability of the model on unseen academic academic texts effectively.
papers. - The final system is deployed as a web-based or API The results highlight the model’s robustness and adaptabil-
solution, allowing users to upload documents for automated ity, as evidenced by high accuracy, precision, recall, and F1-
evaluation. scores during evaluation. The use of transfer learning allowed
6. Feedback Mechanism : - A feedback loop is implemented the model to adapt to the nuanced language and structure
to gather user input on system performance. - Continuous of academic writing, enhancing its capabilities in identifying
retraining on newer datasets ensures adaptability to evolving semantic and syntactic issues. Real-world testing further val-
academic writing styles and standards. idated the system’s utility, providing actionable feedback to
This methodology provides a structured, multi-dimensional authors and streamlining the paper review process.
framework for automated paper evaluation, ensuring accuracy, This approach offers significant advantages, such as scala-
scalability, and comprehensiveness. bility across disciplines, quick processing times, and a user-
friendly interface for identifying errors and inconsistencies.
IV. R ESULT It paves the way for more automated solutions in academic
quality assurance, reducing the workload of reviewers and
The results of our study demonstrate the efficacy of utilizing fostering more rigorous and efficient scholarly communication.
an NLP-based machine learning model for automated aca- Future research could focus on extending the system’s
demic paper checking. The model was trained on a carefully capabilities to assess specific disciplinary conventions, pla-
curated dataset of academic papers and successfully evaluated giarism detection, or evaluating content novelty. Additionally,
against both the training and test sets, highlighting its ro- incorporating advanced natural language generation techniques
bustness and adaptability. The performance metrics, including could enable the model to provide even more insightful
accuracy, precision, recall, and F1-score, indicate that the feedback. This study demonstrates that NLP and machine
model achieved a high level of effectiveness in identifying learning models have immense potential to transform the
structural inconsistencies, grammatical errors, and citation academic publishing process, ensuring high standards and
anomalies within the texts. efficient quality control.
During the evaluation phase, the model’s ability to analyze
semantic coherence and thematic alignment was assessed, VI. R EFERENCES
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