I'm trying to understand this figure from a paper I'm reading, but I'm stuck on this part of their proposed reaction mechanism (see green box in attached image). As someone who barely passed organic chemistry 6 years ago, I have two questions.
1) How come the reaction starts at the meta hydroxyl group, but then switches to the hydroxl at the para position?
2) The paper states that the autooxidation reaction forms an o-semiquinone radical that quickly turns into o-quinone. But I thought the ortho-quinone would look like the image I have on the right - how come the authors consider their product as o-quinone when it clearly has an additional oxygen?
Any explanations or insight would be much appreciated!