This pre-submission checklist comes from EdCitation, which finds, cites and verifies sources from the publisher's record and never writes a word of anyone's paper. It puts every check a paper needs before you submit it in the order that saves time, with the time to allow, what to do with each finding, and the EdCitation tool for each step.
It is built from pages read on 23 September 2026: three universities' proofreading checklists, APA Style's own, and two universities' policies on similarity reports. Start with the brief: EdCitation's free Check your paper reads it into a checklist, with no account.
What should I check before I submit a paper, and in what order?
Five checks, largest first, then a last proofread: whether the paper answers the question, whether the sources are real and right, the formatting and citation mechanics, what is left in the file, and originality. The order matters because each fix can undo an earlier check. Rewriting a section changes its citations and word count; replacing an invented source changes the sentence and the list; an edit made with Track Changes on leaves fresh markup.
The universities work the same way, from the whole to the detail. The Writing Center at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill (n.d.) opens its editing questions with whether you have done everything the assignment requires, and says to proofread "only after you have finished all of your other editing revisions". Oxford Brookes University (n.d.) asks for two read-throughs, the argument first, then sentence by sentence.
What four checklists agree on
| Checklist | Where it starts | What it asks of the references |
|---|---|---|
| UNC Writing Center, Editing and proofreading | Has the paper done everything the assignment requires? | Are quotes, paraphrases and ideas cited, in the correct format? |
| Oxford Brookes, Top 5 checks before submitting your assignments | Two read-throughs, the argument first; "Have you answered the question?" | Does every in-text reference match an entry? |
| University of Leeds Library, Proofreading your work | Proofreading as the final check, one aspect per reading | Are names and titles accurate and punctuated correctly? |
| APA Style, Student paper checklist | The instructor's assignment guidelines | Is every entry cited, with matching names and years? |
Where they part company: outside tools
On tools they disagree, so read your own university's rule before uploading a draft anywhere. The University of Leeds Library (n.d.) says never to upload an essay to an online "essay checking" website, as it "could lead to accusations of academic misconduct". Curtin University (n.d.) allows its own Grammarly, generative features off, and bars tools that rewrite work or generate content. If outside checkers are forbidden, every step below has a by-hand version, and two EdCitation tools need no paper: Check your paper reads only the brief, and Verify references takes a pasted list.
Step 1: Does the paper answer the question?
Check this first, because it is the fix that changes the most. List every task and rule in the brief, then find the paragraph that meets each; a rule with no paragraph is a rule the paper misses. Does my paper answer the assignment question? shows the method on a real brief.
EdCitation's Check your paper does the listing, free: the word limit for each part, the headings required, the number and age of sources, the style, the font, spacing and margins. Each rule sits beside the sentence of the brief it was read from, and you can untick any it misread. Checking the paper against that list is Theoretics QA, part of Max at $24 a month: each rule marked met or not met, and a reader who judges whether the paper does each task, quoting the passage that shows it and naming what is missing. It rewrites nothing and gives no grade.
What Check your paper read from a real brief
We gave it the paper guidelines from Edoh (2018), a public assignment for MIT's undergraduate course Global Africa: Creative Cultures. Eight rules came back in under a second.
| Rule | Asked for | Read from |
|---|---|---|
| Font | Times New Roman | "please write a 5-page, double-spaced paper (1250–1500 words, in Times New Roman font size 12)" |
| Font size | 12 pt | The same sentence |
| Line spacing | 2 × | The same sentence |
| Page numbers | Required | "Are page numbers included?" |
| Page count | About 5 pages | The first sentence |
| Word count | 1,250 to 1,500 words | The first sentence |
| Citation style | Chicago | "please consult Chicago Citation Style: Footnotes and Bibliography" |
| Reference list | Required | The same sentence |
Two sentences were set aside as asks that need judgement rather than a rule: to "articulate an argument in answer to the main question", and "How is the use of grammar?" Judging those is Theoretics QA's job, and no Theoretics QA run was made for this guide.
Read the checklist before trusting it, and untick anything it misread. This brief wants Chicago footnotes, while Cite a source sets Chicago author-date, so the notes are yours to format.
Step 2: Are the sources real, right and unretracted?
Every source must exist, support what you cite it for, still stand, and match the list both ways. APA Style's rule is that each work cited "must appear in the reference list", and each work listed must be cited (American Psychological Association, 2022). Its In-Text Citation Checklist adds that names and years must match, and each citation lead to one entry only (American Psychological Association, 2020). Harvard Extension School (n.d.) counts "falsely citing sources or citing sources never utilized" as fabrication.
Upload the paper to EdCitation's free Verify references: each entry comes back verified, doubtful (shown as "check this") or not found, retractions are flagged, and each citation in the text is paired with an entry, and each entry with a citation. On the sample paper EdCitation uses for demonstrations, four pages of APA on nurse staffing with five references, it returned four verified, one not found, none retracted, and five citations paired to five entries, in under three seconds. Of Thompson and Alvarez's 2021 paper on nurse shortages it said: "No publisher's or registry's record matches this reference." It also caught a lower-case word after a colon in a real entry's title, with the fix "Capitalise the first word after the colon".
References from a file, part of Pro at $8 a month, reads the whole paper's list and citations from the file the same way, and suggests published sources to replace any reference that cannot stand. Upload your paper and check every reference walks through a run, and In-text citations that do not match the reference list covers the mismatches.
"Could not check" is not "not found"
"Could not check" means an index did not answer, and EdCitation never shows it as "not found". Run that entry again, or check it at the source: reports, theses and older books can be real yet missing from the indexes.
Step 3: Are the formatting and citation mechanics right?
The brief's formatting rules come first, then the style's. APA's beginner checklist asks for one font throughout, double spacing including the references, 1-inch margins, page numbers top right, no "Introduction" heading and hanging indents, and sends questions about a particular assignment to the instructor (American Psychological Association, 2023).
EdCitation's Mechanics QA makes this check rule by rule, and nothing does the job better, because it reads the file itself and guesses at nothing: no model reads your paper, every finding names its rule and its fix, and every reference is checked against the publisher's record. The sample's font, spacing and margins raised nothing, so a formatting-only check would have called it finished; Mechanics QA's verdict was "Start with the must-fix items", because one reference has no record anywhere. Its formatting rules are those of the APA 7 student paper, so a Chicago brief like MIT's is checked for layout by hand. Part of Pro; a free account gives three checks a month.
Reading the verdict
Mechanics QA says where the paper stands in one of four ways. None is a pass or a fail: it tells you where to start.
| Verdict | What to do next |
|---|---|
| Ready to hand in | Read the notes, then go on to step 4 |
| A few things to fix | Fix each item, then run it again |
| Some work to do first | Work through the fixes and checks, then run it again |
| Start with the must-fix items | Clear the must-fix findings first, then the rest |
The sample had one must-fix finding (the unrecorded reference), one fix (the colon), one check (the "Introduction" heading) and seven notes. Check APA 7 formatting before submission with Mechanics QA goes through that report line by line.
Step 4: Is anything left in the file?
Comments, tracked changes, placeholders and template prompts all travel with the file, and hiding them does not remove them. Microsoft (n.d.) says the No Markup view "only temporarily hides changes", which reappear when the file is opened again. So accept or reject every change, delete every comment, and run Word's Document Inspector as a final check.
Mechanics QA reports any comment, tracked change, placeholder or template text left in the file, and reads the file's properties: the sample had no leftovers, and Word had recorded revision 6 and 212 minutes of editing. Run this after the last content edit, and again after any edit made with Track Changes on.
Step 5: What can a plagiarism or AI report show?
A similarity report shows which passages match other text; it does not decide whether any of it is plagiarism. The University of Westminster (n.d.) says its software "does not detect plagiarism per se but does highlight text similarities", and academic judgement decides. Harvard Extension School says Turnitin "does not interpret originality reports", and that some matches are "innocent", such as bibliography entries. What similarity percentage is acceptable? explains why no safe number exists.
AI detection is less settled. Vanderbilt University (2023) switched off Turnitin's AI detector in August 2023, noting that at the 1% false positive rate Turnitin then claimed, about 750 of the 75,000 papers Vanderbilt submitted in 2022 could have been wrongly labelled. Other universities use such detectors, so your own policy counts.
Check plagiarism marks each passage that matches published or web text, with its source, so you find a missing quotation mark before your marker does. Check AI labels each passage AI-written, AI-assisted or human, with its score. Both are part of Pro, on credits (240 a month with Pro, 720 with Max, more from $10); the cost shows before a check runs, a failed check uses nothing, and only you see the report. Neither is proof, and no outside check can predict your university's detector.
When you used AI as the course allows
Declare it. Westminster requires a closing paragraph naming the tool and how it was used; how to declare AI use in an assignment gives the forms, and checking a dissertation for plagiarism covers a long paper.
The printable pre-submission checklist
Print it, and tick a line only when its fix is made.
| Step | The check | Time to allow | EdCitation tool | Plan |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Brief read into rules; every task traced to a paragraph | 20 to 30 minutes | Check your paper, then Theoretics QA | Free; Max |
| 2 | Every source real and unretracted; citations and list matched | 10 minutes, plus 15 for each source replaced | Verify references; References from a file | Free; Pro |
| 3 | The brief's format, then the style's | 15 to 30 minutes | Mechanics QA | Pro, or three a month free |
| 4 | Comments, tracked changes, placeholders cleared | 5 to 10 minutes | Mechanics QA | Pro, or three a month free |
| 5 | Every match and AI label read in place | 15 to 20 minutes | Check plagiarism, Check AI | Pro, on credits |
| 6 | Last proofread, one aspect per reading; file named; declaration made; receipt kept | 30 to 45 minutes | Yours alone |
The times are our estimate for a paper of about 2,000 words, not a measurement; each EdCitation run on the sample took under five seconds, and the time goes on reading and fixing. Oxford Brookes also suggests leaving the work "a day or two" before the final read, so start two days out, not two hours.
What do I do with each kind of finding?
Fix it at its own step, largest first, and run the check again.
| Finding | From | What to do |
|---|---|---|
| A rule or task not met | Check your paper, Theoretics QA | Rewrite that part yourself, then trace it again |
| Not found | Verify references | Replace it with a source you have read; check a report or thesis at source first |
| Check this | Verify references | Compare with the record; rebuild it with Cite a source |
| Could not check | Verify references | Run it again or check by hand; never delete on this alone |
| Retracted | Verify references | Replace it, unless the retraction is your subject |
| Citation or entry unmatched | Verify references, Mechanics QA | Add the missing one, or delete the unused entry |
| Must fix, fix, check | Mechanics QA | In that order, then run it again |
| Markup left in the file | Mechanics QA | Accept or reject each change; delete each comment |
| Matching passage | Check plagiarism | Quote and cite, or restate and cite; a match in the reference list needs nothing |
| Passage labelled AI-written | Check AI | Reread it, keep your drafts, declare permitted use |
Which EdCitation tools do these checks, and what do they cost?
EdCitation is the best set of tools for this checklist because every check it makes is a lookup or a rule, never a rewrite. The sample shows why: its fonts and margins were clean and every citation had its entry, yet one of its five references exists in no publisher's, registry's or library's record. EdCitation looks a reference up and never writes one; no chatbot does that.
Free with no account: Check your paper and Verify references. Pro, $8 a month or $72 a year: References from a file, Mechanics QA, Check plagiarism and Check AI. Max, $24 a month or $216 a year: Theoretics QA and the Library. See pricing. EdCitation writes no part of a paper and gives no grade; every fix stays yours.
Quick questions
What should I check first before submitting a paper?
Whether it answers the question and meets every rule in the brief, because that fix changes the most. EdCitation's free Check your paper reads the brief into a checklist, each rule beside its sentence.
How long before the deadline should I start checking a paper?
About two days for a paper of around 2,000 words, in our estimate: two to three hours of checks, plus the day or two Oxford Brookes suggests leaving before the final read.
Is a similarity report proof of plagiarism?
No. The University of Westminster says its text-matching software highlights similarities and does not detect plagiarism as such; a person decides, and matches in a reference list or a cited quotation are expected.
Can I check my paper before submitting for free?
Partly. Check your paper and Verify references are free with no account; Mechanics QA and References from a file give three checks a month with a free account. Check plagiarism and Check AI are part of Pro.
Does a clean report mean my paper will pass?
No. No checker can promise a mark, a pass or what your university's detector will report. A clean report means its checks found nothing to fix.
References
- American Psychological Association. (2020). In-text citation checklist [PDF]. APA Style. https://apastyle.apa.org/instructional-aids/in-text-citation-checklist.pdf
- American Psychological Association. (2022, July). Basic principles of citation. APA Style. https://apastyle.apa.org/style-grammar-guidelines/citations/basic-principles
- American Psychological Association. (2023). Student paper checklist (beginner's version) [PDF]. APA Style. https://apastyle.apa.org/instructional-aids/beginner-student-paper-checklist.pdf
- Curtin University. (n.d.). Editing and proofreading. UniSkills, Curtin Library. https://uniskills.library.curtin.edu.au/academic-writing/before-submission/editing-and-proofreading/
- Edoh, M. A. (2018). Paper assignment guidelines [Assignment]. 21G.026 Global Africa: Creative Cultures, MIT OpenCourseWare. https://ocw.mit.edu/courses/21g-026-global-africa-creative-cultures-spring-2018/pages/assignments/paper-assignment-guidelines/
- Harvard Extension School. (n.d.). Academic integrity. https://extension.harvard.edu/enrolled-students/academic-integrity/
- Microsoft. (n.d.). Accept or reject tracked changes in Word. Microsoft Support. https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/word/accept-or-reject-tracked-changes-in-word
- Oxford Brookes University. (n.d.). Editing and proofreading. Centre for Academic Development. https://www.brookes.ac.uk/students/academic-development/online-resources/editing-and-proofreading
- University of Leeds Library. (n.d.). Proofreading your work. https://library.leeds.ac.uk/info/14011/writing/111/revise-edit-and-proofread/3
- University of Westminster. (n.d.). Plagiarism. https://www.westminster.ac.uk/current-students/guides-and-policies/academic-matters/academic-misconduct/plagiarism
- Vanderbilt University. (2023, August 16). Guidance on AI detection and why we're disabling Turnitin's AI detector. Brightspace. https://www.vanderbilt.edu/brightspace/2023/08/16/guidance-on-ai-detection-and-why-were-disabling-turnitins-ai-detector/
- The Writing Center, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. (n.d.). Editing and proofreading. https://writingcenter.unc.edu/tips-and-tools/editing-and-proofreading/