Hi @asmecher,
We’ve had a discussion about whether the CI statement in our plugin should be author-level or submission-level, and we think that for our use-case it’s best to keep them at submission-level. We definitely do recognise that there is utility in author-level CI statements however, it’s just that this plugin may only end up serving a subset of users, which is fine. Our reasons for submission-level CI statements are:
- Both authors and editors have expressed to us in large numbers that more concise submission forms are preferable. Entering/repeating CI statements for large author lists can be a real time-drain, and managing them after submission equally so.
- A single CI statement can be rendered onto an article page in a more readable way than multiple ones. For us, we consider the information too important to get accidentally buried in multiple sections. In practise we find that often the majority of authors will not have anything to declare, but one or two might, and this situation is more concisely expressed in a single piece of text, instead of, say, eight individual statements with seven declaring nothing and one having an important declaration to make.
- To our knowledge, single submission-level CI statements tend to be more commonplace, and we export metadata to indexes such as crossref, where the systems are set up to accept submission-level statements more readily. Both in the exporting of metadata from OJS (often in externally defined formats) and the importing to indexes, we expect a submission-level CI statement to fit this much more easily than author-level ones, which we suspect will be less supported.
We do understand, however, that in general it is preferable to keep things in line with previous releases, rather than take a slightly different direction. We are happy to continue this discussion, if there is any interest.
With best regards,
Peter Ford (PM, Ubiquity Press)