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.”

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.