Aries Systems Corporation

Authors submitting manuscripts to scholarly journals often spend valuable time entering information into the system that is already included in their manuscript documents. To streamline the submission process, Editorial Manager® (EM) comes equipped with Xtract, an automated data extraction tool. As Authors upload their manuscript files to EM, Xtract works behind the scenes to automatically extract key metadata from provided documents and pre-populates system fields within the system. This eliminates the need for Authors to rekey information and leads to more accurate submission metadata for publishers, creating a more efficient workflow and improved user experience. Xtract can also accommodate double-blind workflows.

The ideal order for the front matter of a submitted file is as follows. The Xtract process will only attempt to extract those fields in bold below and, the order of the other fields can help the system identify the correct fields to extract.

• Title/Subtitle
• Short title
• Author Names
• Author Affiliations
• Corresponding Author Information
• Author Footnotes
• Abstract
• Keywords
• Conflict of Interest or Funding Statement

Although Editorial Manager’s submission interface does not require conformance to any specific style of manuscript preparation for the automatic extraction of submission metadata, Aries recommends that publications inform Authors of some tips that should yield higher-quality results. Firstly, auto-extraction will only work on Word document and PDF files (.doc, .docx, .pdf). Additionally, it is crucial that the first file uploaded by the Author contains the data to be extracted, with cover letters uploaded subsequently if necessary. The order of information, formatting of files, and placement of data are also vital to ensuring Xtract pulls the information successfully. For more optimization tips, check out our list of best practices for preparing submission files for Xtract in EM and a brief overview video.