Manuscript management systems require sensible management: The case of authors from different geographic regions

Abstract

Manuscript management systems (MMSs) are used to facilitate the submission of articles to journals. They guide authors by making specific requests, which may be optional or mandatory. In the latter case, authors would hope that such requests are not trivial, nor– in the author’s opinion– should they be required for any aspects that are not related to the article’s academic content. In this case study, a brief account is noted for a mandatory clause in some MMSs of indexed journals in which the submitting author, and presumably the corresponding author (CA), must make note of the regional or geographic source of that work, research or intellect. In the case of a single CA with one affiliation, the choice is simple, and there are no issues, but when there is a single CA or co-CAs with multiple and geographically diverse affiliations, which regional source should be selected? This article emphasizes that in the latter case, metadata that is provided by the submitting author is both inaccurate and potentially biased. This is important if the journal and publisher use such metadata to showcase the regional or global diversity of their submitting authors. An assessment of the MMSs of 16 of the top 50 ranked neuroscience journals– in terms of their Clarivate impact factors– revealed only one journal (Elsevier’s Brain Behavior and Immunity) that required this mandatory “Region of Origin” clause in its MMS.