I am new to the Forum, I am an academic Librarian from the University of Malta, Over this recent year we have shown interest in using this great tool and spent some time testing, we are now testing this tool with two local medical journals. We are hoping to launch within the next academic year.
During testing we noticed that when an Author Submits a word document to the editor the editor and he forwards it to the reviewer, we noticed that in the word file received by the reviewer, there is visible the Author information under the properties etc…
With some quick research we came across a feature from the Microsoft Word called Document Inspector which helps remove some metadata the file might have before sending for reviewing.
Finally coming to my question, is there an automated or quicker way of removing the author information on the files preferably on OJS.
This really has nothing to do with OJS, but it is a big part of our interactions with reviewers, who (along with authors) cannot be counted on to make these kinds of changes.
Important to note is that the ordinary Windows “Properties / Details / Remove Properties and Personal Information” facility WILL NOT REMOVE the identifying tags on TRACK CHANGES if they remain in the file. Given that track-changes (in Word) is a convenient way for reviewers to identify suggested changes – and, for that matter, for authors to identify revisions they have made to – we journal managers have to make double-sure about anonymizing the files going back and forth.
So anyway, fwiw, the net threw up an effective way of replacing the ID tags of users making tracked changes.
Hope this helps