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I'm submitting a paper to an Elsevier journal. One of the submission steps says that:

Please enter any comments you would like to send to the Journal Office.

What does it mean? What should I exactly enter as a comment? I thought it means the cover letter, but it seems that I was wrong...

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  • This has now become a required field. I had nothing to write so I wrote "No additional comments".
    – Thangachelli Debopritama
    Mar 18, 2021 at 12:35

2 Answers 2

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This kind of question is a "catch all" in case there is something you wanted to add that did not fit in any of the other questions in the submission. If there's nothing you can think of that was not already covered in the rest of the submission, just leave it blank. I have now submitted a number of papers on submission sites that use a question like this, and I have never had anything to add.

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  • Should I explain about what I have done in my paper (for example the novelty of my work) and why I think my paper fits their aims and scope in this section (step)? However, I have already written these things in my cover letter...
    – Pablo
    Mar 10, 2020 at 10:32
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    Then there is no need to state this again (and in any case, the referees will assess this without you prompting them specifically).
    – Ben
    Mar 10, 2020 at 13:12
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Well, if you don't have anything to say to the Journal Office, then the logical approach is to just leave the field empty. And if you there was something you wanted to say, then that's the place to put it!

A typical thing people might want to put there is that they think that a particular editor would be a good fit for the article you're submitting. Another example would be if you think that an editor is negatively pre-disposed to your work or has any other kind of conflict of interest, or if there are reviewers for which this is true and that you don't want to be involved in the paper.

But if you can't think of anything that you want to say, then don't say anything :-)

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  • Should I explain about what I have done in my paper (for example the novelty of my work) and why I think my paper fits their aims and scope in this section (step)? However, I have already written these things in my cover letter...
    – Pablo
    Mar 10, 2020 at 10:31
  • @Pablo: Right. That goes into the cover letter. There is no need to duplicate any information.
    – Wolfgang Bangerth
    Mar 10, 2020 at 13:12

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