AbstractRemoving the field redefinitions, the Bianchi identities and the total derivative freedoms from the general form of gauge invariant NS–NS couplings at order $$\alpha '^3$$
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, we have found that the minimum number of independent couplings is 872. We find that there are schemes in which there is no term with structures $$R,\,R_{\mu \nu },\,\nabla _\mu H^{\mu \alpha \beta }$$
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, $$ \nabla _\mu \nabla ^\mu \Phi $$
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. In these schemes, there are sub-schemes in which, except one term, the couplings can have no term with more than two derivatives. In the sub-scheme that we have chosen, the 872 couplings appear in 55 different structures. We fix some of the parameters in type II supersting theory by its corresponding four-point functions. The coupling which has term with more than two derivatives is constraint to be zero by the four-point functions.