The phrase "alert authors" is correct and usable in written English.
It can be used when notifying or warning authors about something important or requiring their attention.
Example: "We need to alert authors about the upcoming deadline for manuscript submissions."
Alternatives: "notify authors" or "inform authors".
Editors should encourage authors to respond adequately for example, by making a contract between the author and journal on acceptance of the article, alerting authors to substantive criticisms, and highlighting substantive criticisms that have not been responded to adequately.
This is a departure from the norm that you should alert your authors of front and center.
Alert readers, authors and reviewers of papers in BJC will have noticed new names among our Subject Editors.
Automatic search alerts were set up in each database to alert the authors to any new papers published which met the search criteria between January 2008 and February 2009; however, no further papers were identified during this period.
On the other hand in all of the studies cited above, in which the clinicians overrode a very high percentage of all alerts, the authors found that in almost all cases the computer-generated alerts were "true-positives" meaning that most observers would consider the clinicians actions to ignore the alert to be contrary to "best clinical practices".
A casual comment by a student alerted the authors to the existence and prevalence of Internet-based paraphrasing tools.
A pink hypopyon, a rare occurrence, alerted the authors to a causative agent of Enterobacteriacae, either Klebsiella or Serratia.
An editor can and will alert their author that an odd coincidence reads as ridiculously contrived, or that a character's dialogue seems stiff and unrealistic; that's part of helping a writer hone their craft and polish their book.
The URL for the article appears in the Author Alert email the corresponding author receives when his/her article is first published online at SpringerLink.
