I have just accepted a paper for reviewing for a journal in neuroscience. While skimming through the paper, it appeared that the authors had heavily cited literature originating from the country where the authors are from. Since then I have carefully read through the Introduction and most of the Discussion section and I am quite convinced that this is so. There also appears to be a tendency of self citation, although it is hard to be certain.
To be clear, the paper has nothing to do with any specific region of the world and there are other papers (from diverse regions) that the authors could have cited but have chosen not to (whenever the authors are throwing in an example citation of the ilk: "...many studies have shown that xyz is quite common (Citation)".
My questions:
Are there tools that can return the affiliation information (specifically the country and additional information like ORCID iD), given a list of references? I would like to see whether my intuition about the possible citation bias is correct (and if so, perhaps mention it to the editor)
Should this be a matter of concern? I am quite new to peer review and I feel that wherever possible, the references should be diverse (once again, to clarify, the paper has nothing to do with a specific region of the world and that there are other studies which the authors could have cited)