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Aries Systems News and Press Releases

Recent News

[2001-2007 Aries News Archive]

Aries Systems' President, Lyndon Holmes, Co-authors Paper on the History of Online Peer-Review

October 09, 2008, North Andover, MA, USA - In collaboration with Greg Tananbaum of ScholarNext Consulting, Lyndon Holmes, President of Aries Systems Corporation, recently co-authored an article on the history of Web-based peer review which was published in the October issue of the journal Learned Publishing. The paper covers the evolution of electronic solutions for the editorial workflow from the earliest experiments in the 1970's to the current dominance of online systems in the scholarly publishing industry.

The full article (DOI: 10.1087/095315108X356734) can be found at http://dx.doi.org/10.1087/095315108X356734.

Professional Engineering Publishing Selects Preprint Manager for Journal Production Tracking

September 25, 2008, North Andover, MA, USA - Professional Engineering Publishing (the publishing division of the Institution of Mechanical Engineers) will transition to Web-based production tracking using Preprint Manager from Aries Systems Corporation. Mick Spencer, the Journals Production Manager at PEP, commented, “Manuscript production is mission critical and time sensitive. We selected Aries because they have an established track record delivering reliable and configurable workflow solutions and their offering is backed by a substantial development and support organization.”

Editorial Manger New Release (Version 6.1) Generates Positive Feedback
[pdf version]

September 17, 2008, North Andover, MA, USA - Aries Systems Corporation is pleased to announce the availability of Editorial Manager version 6.1. The functionality added in the new release was informed by hundreds of customer interviews, listserv suggestions, user group workshops and rigorous beta testing.

The new release will have a profoundly beneficial impact on the efficiency and quality of peer review for thousands of scholarly journals. For example, the new "author questionnaire" functionality allows journals to configure article-type and revision-specific author questions. Question responses are available in text, drop-down list, date, check-box and radio-button formats. The author responses to questions are displayed with the manuscript and can be added to the Editorial Manager "transmittal form." Author questionnaires are created and modified by authorized journal staff at any time, and are therefore not subject to the usual cost and delays associated with vendor software change requests. “I adore this tool,” commented one beta tester.

Beta testers also praised several other new features, such as tools for managing journal taxonomy, resulting in improved reviewer selection and editorial content management; new editorial workflow options, which allow editors to propose reviewers for invitation by journal office staff; manuscript linking options; and convenient new methods for inviting authors. Again, the functionality is entirely activated with easy-to-use Web configuration options, requiring no software changes.

“We are constantly thinking about the needs of editors, reviewers and authors,” commented Tony Alves, Director of Product Management. He added, “New features for linking manuscripts, inviting authors and managing letters to the editor are all examples of how Editorial Manager can be used to extend the reach of journals beyond the increasingly competitive domain of original research.”

EDP Sciences Selects Editorial Manager

September 16, 2008, North Andover, MA, USA - EDP Sciences, leading French publisher of more than 50 scientific and technical journals, has chosen Editorial Manager for online peer review.

Catherine Brassac, project manager at EDP Sciences, commented, "Editorial Manger is easy to use and provides unequalled configurability and customer service." Deployment of journals will begin in the winter of 2008.

Aries Systems Corporation Announces Integration with CrossCheck Plagiarism Detection Service
[pdf version]

August 28, 2008, North Andover, MA, USA - Aries Systems Corporation announced today that its Editorial Manager® online manuscript submission and peer review system has been integrated with the CrossCheck plagiarism detection service. CrossCheck technology compares the content of documents against text stored in a growing database of published materials to identify possible instances of plagiarism. CrossCheck is powered by technology from iParadigms, LLC and content from contributing scholarly publishing members of the CrossRef organization.

The Editorial Manager online submission system is used by more than 2,900 scholarly journals and processes tens of thousand of manuscripts per month. Editors and reviewers frequently face the difficult task of assessing manuscript authenticity. Convenient access to CrossCheck from within Editorial Manager workflows adds a powerful tool to help improve editorial integrity. For example, an editor can upload a manuscript to CrossCheck and receive a report that indicates the percentage of text which matches previously published literature.

The initial deployment of CrossCheck within Editorial Manager is available now and is activated free of charge from Aries (CrossCheck fees from CrossRef and iParadigms will apply, however). Subsequent implementations will provide more extensive workflow integration options.

Richard Wynne, Vice President of Sales and Marketing at Aries Systems Corporation, commented, “Aries has successfully integrated numerous third-party tools into Editorial Manager workflows, including image checking, reference checking, reference cleanup and smart links to bibliographic databases such as PubMed, Scopus and Google Scholar. The inclusion of access to the CrossCheck service in Editorial Manager workflows will address a frequent request from users that would like tools to assist with plagiarism detection.”

Scholarly Publishers Reach German Authors with Editorial Manager
[pdf version]

July 29, 2008, North Andover, MA, USA - Using the German version of Editorial Manager, leading publishers such as Georg Thieme Verlag, Deutscher Ärzte-Verlag and Hogrefe Verlag have successfully launched online manuscript submission and peer review services specifically tailored to German-speaking authors.

Germany is the world’s third largest source of scholarly manuscripts, and numerous publications focus on the needs of German readers. For this reason, Aries Systems Corporation developed a German language version of its leading online peer review system, Editorial Manager.

When internationalizing Web-based publishing workflow applications such as Editorial Manager, the first challenge is to support language-specific character sets, such as German diacritics. Full compatibility with the Unicode standard (ISO 10646), as provided by Editorial Manager, is essential. While most applications can be modified to display pseudospecial characters, only truly Unicode-compliant systems can store, search and retrieve specialized characters. Without this foundation technology, interface translation is of little value because users cannot access non-Roman and diacritic text characters in a standardized manner.

The second challenge is to appropriately translate colloquial publishing customs and practices. The translation of the Editorial Manager software has been facilitated by Aries Systems’ German office team, based in Langenfeld. Their localized understanding of German publishing culture and close relationship with local publishers ensures that the interface text is not just translated accurately but that it also communicates efficiently and clearly.

The success of this project is reflected in the quality of the publications that have already adopted the German version of Editorial Manager. To see this version in action, please visit any of the following journal submission sites online:

Roswitha Nottebaum, General Manager at Aries Germany, commented “Aries provides robust, multilingual publication workflow solutions. This includes Unicode compliance, translation of support documentation into languages such as German and Chinese, and partnerships with service companies that provide manuscript editing services. Configuration options that are uniquely available in Editorial Manager also make it possible to quickly add data fields for the purpose of storing locally relevant data elements such as multiple language versions of author names. The availability of a German version has made it a lot easier for publishers to get ‘buy in’ from local editors, staff and freelancers.”

Aries Systems Announces Chinese Translations of Editorial Manager User Tutorials
[pdf version]

July 8, 2008, North Andover, MA, USA - Aries Systems Corporation is pleased to announce the availability of Chinese-language Author and Reviewer tutorials for its Editorial Manager peer-review system. Increasingly, scholarly publishers of English-language publications in all disciplines are looking to scientists and researchers in China as a source of high quality manuscripts. The translated tutorials, available free to Editorial Manager users, help Chinese users to better understand the submission and review steps that they will encounter using Editorial Manager. The tutorials include step-by-step Chinese language instruction and are accompanied by illustrative screen displays.

The development of these tutorials reinforces Aries Systems’ commitment to serving the global publishing community. This offering also highlights Aries Systems’ effort to increase its presence among Chinese-speaking Authors and Reviewers in China and elsewhere, as these tutorials help facilitate the process of submitting and reviewing manuscripts via Editorial Manager.

In addition to its Chinese language initiative, Aries Systems has also adapted the entire user interface of Editorial Manager to the German language. Now, German language publications can offer their authors, reviewers and editors a total interface experience in their native language, incorporating all of the extensive, highly configurable Editorial Manager functionality. More than a dozen publications now use the German version of Editorial Manager.

"As publications experience increases in their foreign submissions, the need for instructions and interaction in other languages becomes increasingly important. Publishers using Editorial Manager will now be able to offer their Chinese-speaking Authors and Reviewers intuitive guides to walk them through Editorial Manager," adds Jennifer Fleet, Director of Customer Services at Aries.

The Chinese language tutorials are available for download here.

EMUG 2008 A Great Success

June 25, 2008, North Andover, MA, USA
This year’s Editorial Manager® User Group meeting (EMUG) took place June 12th and 13th in Cambridge, Massachusetts. With the adoption of Editorial Manager by so many journals over the last year, attendance was at record levels. The meeting offered something for everyone – while new users were offered a comprehensive overview in "EM Bootcamp", there were also in depth sessions for more advanced users on using EM in fresh ways. Everyone got the chance to hear about the new features of Version 6.1, share their tips and tricks in the Workaround Workshop and discuss needed enhancements with Aries staff in the Feature Workshop. Plans have already begun for 2009; we hope you will join us at next year’s meeting!

Aries Systems and American Journal Experts Announce Partnership
[pdf version]

May 21, 2008, North Andover, MA, USA - Aries Systems Corporation and American Journal Experts (AJE) are collaborating to make specialized editing services more readily accessible throughout the peer review and production workflows.

The rapid adoption of Editorial Manager® by more than 2,800 scholarly journals has made it convenient for international authors to submit their manuscripts online. Consequently, publishers have experienced dramatic increases in the number of high-quality submissions from non-native English language authors.

Because these articles often require special handling, Aries and AJE are working together to facilitate seamless access to language editing services during editorial and production workflows via direct transmission from Aries’ workflow software to AJE. Authors benefit from convenient access to English language editing of their manuscripts. Publishers, editors and peer reviewers benefit from improved manuscript language quality during workflow.

"AJE’s partnership with Aries will offer a simple solution to publishers struggling to accommodate the editorial demands of an increasing number of manuscripts submitted by non-native English speaking authors. Preprint Manager® and Editorial Manager already allow a simplified workflow through the submission and peer review process — now the option of automatically sending a submission through AJE’s language editing service without leaving Preprint and Editorial Manager will bring enhanced ease of use, convenience and cost savings to the customer," says Mary Anne Baynes, Sales and Marketing Manager at AJE.

"Aries is pleased to provide a software platform which allows the integration of such quality third-party services as those offered by AJE," adds Richard Wynne, Vice President of Sales and Marketing at Aries, "partnerships such as these enable our customers to attract superior authors and manuscripts."

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Editorial Manager Support for Office 2007 Activated

April 28, 2008, North Andover, MA, USA - Aries Systems Corporation is pleased to announce the activation of Editorial Manager support for Microsoft Office 2007. This means that "docx" and other Office 2007 file formats are reliably converted to PDF during manuscript submission. Publishers that do not wish to process Office 2007 files can continue to exclude them through a configuration option, in which case an appropriate warning message is displayed to authors.

"Author service is key, so we are delighted that journals using Editorial Manager can accommodate the growing community of authors using Office 2007," said Richard Wynne, Vice President of Sales and Marketing at Aries.

Journals with questions concerning support for Office 2007 should contact their publisher or Aries Systems account coordinator.

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Aries Welcomes New Editorial Manager Users

April 23, 2008, North Andover, MA, USA – In early 2008, the number of journals using Editorial Manager rose to over 2,800. Recent new customers include:

  • American Association of Critical-Care Nurses
  • American Society for Engineering Management
  • Colegio Nacional de Opticos-Optometristas de España
  • Geological Society of America
  • King Fahd University of Petroleum & Minerals
  • National Council of Teachers of English
  • Seismological Society of America
  • Society of Glass Technology
  • University of Pennsylvania Press

Thank you and welcome!
[to see a list of all the journals currently using tools from Aries Systems, click here]

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Nature Goes Live with Web-Based Production Tracking
[pdf version]

February 26, 2008, North Andover, MA, USA – After a rigorous period of testing and implementation, the journal Nature went live with Web-based production tracking on February 11, 2008 using Preprint Manager from Aries Systems Corporation.

Although other journals published by Nature Publishing Group (NPG) had been using the system since 2007, the staff of Nature had additional requirements that were not originally part of the software’s functionality. Aries Systems and Nature Publishing Group entered into a trans-Atlantic cooperative development effort that resulted in the successful release of many new features. Innovative aspects of the system implementation include the seamless import of accepted manuscripts from Nature’s peer review system and cross-journal reporting using a mirror server. In addition, the highly configurable architecture of Preprint Manager enables Nature to respond immediately to changing workflow needs.

Nature, the flagship journal of Nature Publishing Group, is published weekly, making precision and efficiency vital concerns throughout the production workflow. The implementation of Preprint Manager has allowed the production staff to improve the efficiency of their operations without compromising the quality of one of the world’s leading scientific journals. It also allows for unprecedented participation by authors in the post-acceptance workflow.

"Improved production tracking for Nature has been an important objective for NPG, and we are delighted that the system has been successfully deployed," says James McQuat, Editorial Production Director of Nature Publishing Group. Aries Systems’ President, Lyndon Holmes adds, "The team at Nature provided invaluable feedback during the development phase and the system is richer and more functional as a result of this interaction."

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Publisher S. Hirzel Verlag Selects Editorial Manager
[pdf version]

January 24, 2008, North Andover, MA, USA - Beginning in early 2008, the flagship journal of S. Hirzel Verlag, Acta Acustica (united with Acustica), will deploy Editorial Manager for online manuscript submission and peer review.

"We waited for the right moment to offer our editors, authors, and reviewers a solution such as Editorial Manager," says Sabine Körner, M.A., who is responsible for contracts and licenses at S. Hirzel Verlag. "We expect to realize significant efficiency and time advantages with a sophisticated system such as the one offered by Aries."

S. Hirzel Verlag was founded in 1853 and is based in Stuttgart, Germany. S. Hirzel Verlag also publishes Zeitschrift für Deutsches Altertum und Deutsche Literatur (ZfDA) and Universitas—Orientierung in der Wissenswelt, in addition to scientific works focused on chemistry, physics, and philosophy, and books with a natural sciences focus.

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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.

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