publications - What is the explicit meaning of “corresponding author”?

Problem

This question was triggered by the comments on this discussion, but comments and answers on these questions confirm the existence of conflicting ideas.

There seem to be two prevalent interpretations of the word corresponding author:

1. 
   

   The corresponding author is the one who corresponds the (unpublished) paper to the journal, i.e., who performs the technical process of submitting the paper, is available for requests on the review and publishing processes, and so on.

   
   


2. 
   

   The corresponding author is the one who corresponds on the (published) paper with anybody who likes to do so, e.g., because they found an error or like some clarification.

   
   

What I found out so far

Until today, I was only aware of the first interpretation, which was confirmed by my experience: For all papers I submitted, I automatically became the corresponding author and cannot remember that I could choose one of my co-authors for this role. Some of these journals do not even indicate a corresponding author to the reader. Also, there already is a way to indicate that an author is available for questions on the paper (interpretation 2): stating the e-mail address.

On the other hand, other journals do indicate corresponding authorship, which makes little sense for interpretation 1. Also, the value put into this role by some funding agencies for its implied meaning makes more sense for interpretation 2 (not that I completely agree with it).

Looking for some guidelines from publishers covering multiple fields, I found the following instructions on denoting the corresponding author from Elsevier¹, which kind-of covers both interpretations:

Clearly indicate who will handle correspondence at all stages of refereeing and publication, also post-publication.

While there are other questions on this site touching this issue, they focus on consequences of the interpretation, such as how to assign corresponding authorship, the implications of corresponding authorship, or whom to address with a request.

Actual question

What is the explicit meaning of the word corresponding author? Interpretation 1 or 2 as listed above, both, something else, or is this an extreme example of academia’s inhomogeneity and the answer depends on the field or publisher? Please answer only if you have more to offer than personal experience and individual journal guidelines. In particular, please address the possibility of a varying meaning.

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^{¹ which is separate for each journal, but seems to be identical in content for many journals}

Answer

IEEE distinguishes between contact author and corresponding author:

Contact Author: This is the person who is contacted in regards to the submission during the peer-review and production processes.

Corresponding Author: This is the person who is listed as the author to be contacted in the printed publication.

PLoS states two types of corresponding authors:

Please note that the corresponding author for the online submission process can be different from the corresponding author of your published manuscript.

Copernicus uses the terms contact author and corresponding author:

From submission to publication, the authors of a manuscript are formally represented by the registered contact author(s). After publication, the authors of a manuscript are formally represented by the corresponding author(s) specified in the published paper.

Personally, I've seen this differentiation several times. Sometimes the corresponding author is simply a role in the journal system that the submitting author/person can assign to one of the authors during the submission process. The corresponding author might also change during the process.

Conclusion:

Some publishers make a difference between the author corresponding with the journal (submitting/contact author) and the author corresponding with potential readers of the article (corresponding author). Some publishers don't. It's absolutely inhomogeneous and seems also to vary by journal not only by publisher. And it varies over time.

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Side note:

And yes, these publishers are indexed in SCOPUS and Web of Science (Science Citation Index, Thomson Reuters Master Journal List).

Search for the publishers in SCOPUS (select checkbox "publisher") or the Thomson Reuters Master Journal List (TRMJL). The latter includes all journals indexed in Web of Science. Unfortunately, the search in TRMJL is only based on journals and not on publishers. Search for "plos" to see PLOS journals, "ieee" for IEEE journals and e.g. "geoscientific" to see two Copernicus journals. See also IEEE indexing agreements, Visibility of PLoS and Copernicus metrics.