Thanks to the Rapid Application Development and Deployment (RADD) methodologies used by Aries, we are pleased to announce the third major release within a 12-month period. After beta testing and gamma deployment starting in October 2010, EM and PM Version 8.1 went to general release in the second week of January 2011.

Tony Alves, Director of Product Management, commented, “Enhanced Reviewer form configuration options in 8.1 enable journals to add a variety of response formats such as drop-down lists and check boxes. Reviewers can be asked to respond ‘yes’ or ‘no’, after which the system displays a follow-up question. Configurability enables journals to ask different reviewer questions based on article type or revision number. All of this means that journals can collect better data from reviewers and save money because reviewer forms are configured without the time or cost of software code changes. Another great feature in 8.1 is the ability to automatically email graphical reports in PDF format to editors on a weekly or monthly schedule.”

As usual, the upgrade does not require any system down-time to deploy, and is performed incrementally to minimize user disruption. If you would like to be notified of the launch for your journal and receive a copy of the release notes, please contact Aries’ Customer Service Department.