Aries Systems News and Press Releases – 2004

Table of Contents

• Aries Systems and Inera Collaborate to Reduce the Cost and Time of Manuscript Publication
• Aries Systems Corporation Becomes CrossRef Agent; Signs With New Customers
• Editorial Manager Release 3.0 Delivers Major New Features for Reference Works and Review Journals
• Sheridan's DigitalExpertSM Image Preflight Technology Now Integrated with Aries' Preprint Manager

[Back to main news page]

Aries Systems and Inera Collaborate to Reduce the Cost and Time of Manuscript Publication
[pdf version]

November 17, 2004, North Andover, MA, USA Aries Systems Corporation (North Andover, Massachusetts, USA) and Inera Incorporated (Newton, Massachusetts, USA) today announced a technology integration agreement that will address one of the most time-consuming and costly steps in the publication of peer-reviewed manuscripts - the validation, linking, and journal style-specific clean up of bibliographic references.

In recent years, desktop software tools such as Inera's product suite, eXtyles®, have made it possible to automate many editorial and production tasks after completion of peer review. Now, Aries and Inera are taking the next step to fully integrate the eXtyles reference-processing tool with Aries' Editorial Manager and Preprint Manager Web-based peer review and production workflow management solutions. The XML interfacing of the eXtyles application with Editorial Manager will provide peer reviewers with hyperlinked bibliographies,authors with early warning of bibliographic errors, and editors with reference lists that have been formatted according to house style. This means that by the time the manuscript goes out for review, most of the references will already be validated and linked, and by the time the manuscript has been accepted for publication, most of the references will be edited and corrected.

Bruce Rosenblum, CEO of Inera, commented, "We have chosen to partner with Aries Systems because the Editorial Manager Web-based peer review system is widely used in the industry, and because Aries has an excellent track record of integrating third-party applications into the manuscript workflow."

Richard Wynne, Vice President of Sales and Marketing at Aries, added, "With the advent of automated tools,there is no reason to wait until a manuscript is accepted for publication before undertaking production-related tasks. eXtyles is a best-of-breed solution for reference clean up, and we are pleased to be working with Inera to make scholarly article preparation easier and more efficient for authors, reviewers, editors and publishers."

The integration of eXtyles reference processing with Editorial Manager is planned for Editorial Manager release 4.0 (scheduled for release in 2005).

About Inera Inc. - Since 1992 Inera (http://www.inera.com) has provided innovative software solutions to the publishing industry. Inera's product suite, eXtyles, is an integrated set of tools for Microsoft Word that automates editorial and XML production processes. eXtyles is employed in the production of over four hundred prestigious journals. Inera's customers include Elsevier Science (London), Cell Press, the American Medical Association, The New England Journal of Medicine, Nature Publishing Group, and Science.

[Back to Top]

Aries Systems Corporation Becomes CrossRef Agent; Signs With New Customers
[pdf version]

September 15, 2004, North Andover, MA, USA - Aries Systems Corporation, the developer of Editorial Manager and Preprint Manager, is pleased to announce that it has become an authorized CrossRef Agent. CrossRef participation by Aries signals the company's commitment to enhancing its offering with DOI (Digital Object Identifier) registration as part of the peer review process. Release 4.0 (planned for Spring 2005) will enable publishers or journals to automatically assign a DOI and register article metadata in CrossRef as soon as a manuscript is accepted for publication. This enhancement delivers two key benefits for journals. Firstly, early registration of the DOI means that the manuscript can be reliably cited as soon as it is accepted for publication. Secondly, the DOI can be used as a universal identifier for sharing manuscript information between the peer review system and third party production management systems.

Richard Wynne, Vice President of Sales and Marketing, commented, "Reducing time-to-publication is a key requirement of scholarly authors. Assigning the DOI at time of publication, or even earlier, means that authors' manuscripts can be reliably cited as soon as they are accepted for publication. This will be very attractive to the author community as well as reducing production costs for publishers." He added, "Participation in CrossRef underscores Aries' ongoing commitment to industry standards and to working with third party partners."

[Back to Top]

Editorial Manager Release 3.0 Delivers Major New Features for Reference Works and Review Journals
[pdf version]

July 28, 2004, North Andover, MA, USA - More than five hundred journals using Editorial Manager for online manuscript submission and tracking are getting a major new release of the market-leading application. The announcement of the new features was applauded by almost one hundred attendees of the Editorial Manager User Group Meeting held in Boston on June 9 and 10, 2004. Pamela Fried of the Journal of Thoracic and Cardiovascular Surgery commented, "The "Proposals and Invited Papers" feature in the 3.0 version of Editorial Manager is a greatly anticipated upgrade. It functioned smoothly in beta testing and appears versatile. We plan to apply it both to invited editorials and letters to the editor and their replies. It represents just one of many examples of Aries' responsiveness to editorial office requests."

Editorial Manager 3.0 is the first release of the application to provide tracking prior to author submission. For example, review journals can create manuscript proposals with target publication schedules. Authors are then invited to submit manuscripts based on those proposals. Similarly, peer review journals can invite authors to submit commentaries on existing manuscripts and the "linked" submissions are tracked through peer review to production.

Other major enhancements include greater flexibility in Reviewer and Editor recommendation forms, ongoing improvements to the user interface, and an expansion of the acceptable file formats allowed for submitted files. Many of these enhancements were suggested at last year's User Group Meeting, and were incorporated into the system with design help from Editorial Manager users.

Additionally, Editorial Manager 3.0 has extended the compatibility of the system with third party applications. This has allowed Aries to integrate artwork quality checking at different points in the peer review workflow. Editorial Manager 3.0 currently supports two different artwork preflight systems and can be easily extended to support more.

Editorial Manager is already ISO 10646-1 (Unicode) compliant and version 3.0 introduces additional compliance with the ISO 3166-1 (country code) standard. Because peer review systems are the first point at which submission data are captured from authors, compliance with standards greatly reduces the cost and time associated with down-stream processing of the submitted data.

Richard Wynne, Vice President of Sales and Marketing at Aries explains, "Editorial Manager version 3.0 is not just offered to new customers. Journals currently using earlier releases of Editorial Manager can upgrade to version 3.0 instantly, without hassle or additional cost. Our proven ability to systematically upgrade software without disruption of the customer environment has made Editorial Manager the system of choice for scholarly societies and publishers."

[Back to Top]

Sheridan's DigitalExpertSM Image Preflight Technology Now Integrated with Aries' Preprint Manager
[pdf version]

April 30, 2004, North Andover, MA, USA - Aries Systems Corporation and The Sheridan Group announce the successful integration of Sheridan's DigitalExpert image preflight technology with Aries' Preprint Manager and Editorial Manager workflow management solutions.

Editorial Manager offers publishers and societies comprehensive Web-based manuscript submission and peer review workflow management. Preprint Manager further manages workflow from manuscript acceptance through electronic publication. While each product can be deployed independently, integration nodes between Editorial Manager and Preprint Manager allow peer review and production activities to occur in parallel. This leads to significantly shortened times between submission and publication, with consequent reductions in publication costs.

Poor image quality is a major factor contributing to increased delays and cost in the scholarly publishing process. Testing of images submitted by authors early in the publication process delivers substantial new benefits to publishers and to the scholarly community. DigitalExpert provides authors with a fast, easy-to-use tool that tests the publication suitability of each submitted image.

Integration of DigitalExpert with Preprint Manager provides authors with specific feedback on the quality of their image submissions along with useful recommendations about how to correct common problems. Authors are never prevented from submitting a manuscript, but receive constructive information to improve their submission preparation. Preprint Manager allows a journal office to specify image checking at different workflow trigger points such as initial submission, revision submission, and final acceptance. Additionally, image preflight results and recommendations can be communicated to authors using journal-configurable merge fields in the system's e-mail function.

Doug Ehmann, Vice President and Chief Technology officer at The Sheridan Group, commented, "The degree to which DigitalExpert has been woven into the peer review workflow by Aries is impressive. The flexibility of the implementation will allow individual journals to tailor the image preflight experience according to their specific needs." Richard Wynne, Vice President of Sales and Marketing at Aries, added, "We have heard from numerous scholarly publishers that DigitalExpert provides excellent preflight feedback, and we are delighted that we have been able to successfully integrate it into Preprint Manager workflows." He added, "This is another example of how Editorial Manager and Preprint Manager deliver on the promise to reduce costs and time to publication, thereby enhancing the entire scholarly publishing process."

About The Sheridan Group - The Sheridan Group (www.Sheridan.com) is a leading provider of a full range of printing and publication services to publishers, associations, and university presses. Headquartered in Hunt Valley, MD, The Sheridan Group includes the following companies: Capital City Press, in Montpelier, VT and The Sheridan Press, located in Hanover, PA, provide short-run sheet-fed scientific, technical, medical and scholarly journal printing and publication services. Dartmouth Journal Services, in Orford and Hanover, NH, provides long-run scientific, technical, medical, and scholarly journal publication services. Dartmouth Printing Company, in Hanover, NH, provides a full range of short-run full web magazine and catalog print production and distribution. United Litho, Inc., in Ashburn, VA, provides short-run web magazine and catalog production services. Sheridan Books, Inc., in Ann Arbor and Chelsea, MI, and Fredericksburg, VA, offers short- to-medium-run web and sheet-fed book services from composition through print production, case binding, and distribution. Sheridan Reprints, in Hanover, PA, provides reprint services ranging from black and white to full-color, as well as marketing and author billing services. http://www.sheridan.com.

[Back to Top]

About Aries:

Aries Systems transforms the way scholarly publishers bring high-value content to the world. The company’s innovative and forward-looking workflow solutions manage the complexities of modern print and electronic publishing – from submission, to editorial management and peer review, to production tracking and publishing channel distribution. As the publishing environment evolves, Aries Systems is committed to delivering solutions that help publishers and scholars enhance the discovery and dissemination of human knowledge. Publish faster, publish smarter, with Aries Systems.

[Back to Top]