October 14, 2005, North Andover, MA, USA – Aries Systems Corporation, developer of the most widely deployed Web-based manuscript tracking and peer review system, today announced the release of Editorial Manager Version 4.0.

First-generation online peer review systems use the World Wide Web to automate simple, manual tasks such as distribution of manuscript copies, sending reviewer reminders and transfer of manuscripts to production systems. Users of enterprise-class peer review systems like Editorial Manager routinely benefit from these and other innovations resulting in dramatic process improvements. For example, since adopting Editorial Manager, Annals of Emergency Medicine has reduced average time from submission to first decision from 47 days to 14 days. Editorial Manager Version 4.0 goes beyond functional workflow improvements, to enhance the qualitative aspects of decision making by editors and reviewers:

• Author-submitted bibliographies are automatically validated and linked to external resources such as PubMed® and CrossRef. This means that reviewers and editors can more easily assess the quality of submissions and can conveniently “drill down” to full content sources cited in manuscripts.
• Bibliographies can be automatically formatted to a specific journal style for reviewer and editor convenience, and to optimize downstream production tasks.
• Journals can specify customized title, keyword and author name searches targeted at external databases such as Google(TM) Scholar, PubMed®, Scirus and other leading bibliographic databases. This helps editors and reviewers to more quickly assess the worth of a submission and to identify duplicate submissions or plagiarism.
• A single click in the user record initiates a database search to identify other articles authored by the user.
• Secure “deep links” mean that editors can initiate their assigned editorial tasks such as reviewer selection directly from email notifications generated by the system.
• Data mining reports help editors better evaluate past reviewer performance and obtain a snapshot view of ongoing peer review activities.

These and many other new features in Version 4.0 mean that Editorial Manager is now significantly ahead of firstgeneration peer review systems. Commenting on her experience with Editorial Manager, Sue Shock, Staff Editor at the journal Medicine said, “EM has definitely made my life easier! Aries anticipates and delivers features I’d like to see added – sometimes before I even think of them myself – such as automated reference checking and linking with eXtyles.” As with previous new releases of Editorial Manager, Version 4.0 is being rolled-out to journals on a phased basis and in a manner that does not require any journal down time or immediate staff retraining. Richard Wynne, Vice President of Sales and Marketing at Aries commented, “The train has left the station for this next generation of online peer review systems. Editorial Manager has been appropriately designed and engineered so that all users, journals and publishers can immediately take advantage of our latest technological innovations – we leave no users behind.”

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.