July 26, 2006, North Andover, MA, USA – Driven by industry changes, society and commercial publishers are re-thinking how they manage the “supply chain” of manuscripts from author submission through final publication in electronic and print formats. Newly released Preprint Manager – Production Tracking from Aries Systems is a web-based tool that enables the coordination of the manuscript “supply chain” involving geographically disparate participants such as authors, editors and off-shore vendors.

The underlying characteristics of Preprint Manager are:

• Web-configurable workflows, tasks, and user roles.
• File management and control.
• Schedule management based on individual manuscripts or by publication issue.
• Web-based tools for controlling, managing and optimizing the supply chain.
• Automated quality assurance tools, such as bibliography checking and formatting.
• Regular releases providing updated functionality.
• Hosting platform with very high (99.99%) availability track-record.
• Integration with online peer review systems.

Traditional content management systems require journals to make massive up-front and recurring investments in software licensing, customization and hosting infrastructure. In contrast, Preprint Manager can be initially deployed for a few thousand dollars and utilization begins immediately without software development. Customization is implemented with the web-based administrator toolkit and regular software updates are provided free of charge. Publishers retain maximum operational flexibility and entirely avoid the high costs and risks common with content management systems.

Richard Wynne, Aries’ VP of Sales and Marketing, said, “Preprint Manager supports existing manuscript preparation practices such as issue-based publishing, while also being an on-ramp for emerging publication models such as end-to-end article-based workflows. It’s hard to imagine publishing a successful journal during the next few years without adopting a tool like Preprint Manager.”

Several leading publishers have already placed orders for Preprint Manager. The American Association of Pharmaceutical Scientists will use Preprint Manager to manage post acceptance workflows for AAPS PharmSciTech and The AAPS Journal; Nature Publishing Group will be piloting the system for Nature and other journals.

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.