Best Journal Manuscript Management Systems Compared (2025)
Reviewed by the NeucitePress Editorial Board — PhD academics, peer-reviewed journal editors and medical communication specialists.
Last updated: July 2026 • Reviewed by the NeucitePress Editorial Board • Reading time: 8 minutes
Every peer-reviewed journal, whether it publishes a handful of articles a year or several thousand, depends on some form of manuscript management system to move a submission from an author’s desktop to a published, citable article. These platforms are the operational backbone of scholarly publishing. They route manuscripts to editors, match papers with reviewers, enforce deadlines, log every decision, and generate the audit trail that peer review integrity depends on. Choosing the wrong one is expensive to undo, because migrating years of submission history and reviewer records mid-stream is disruptive for editors, authors, and reviewers alike. This guide walks through what these systems actually do, compares the major options on the market, and lays out the criteria that should drive the decision.
What a Manuscript Management System Actually Does
At its core, a manuscript management system (sometimes called a peer review system or editorial workflow platform) handles three linked jobs.
- Submission intake. Authors upload manuscripts, figures, supplementary files, and metadata through a structured portal. The system checks for completeness, applies journal-specific formatting or file requirements, and screens for basic issues before a manuscript ever reaches an editor’s desk.
- Peer review workflow. Once a submission passes intake, the system helps editors identify and invite reviewers, tracks acceptance and decline responses, sends reminders as deadlines approach, and collects reviewer reports and recommendations in a structured format.
- Editorial decision tracking. Every decision — desk reject, revise and resubmit, accept, reject after review — is logged with a timestamp and the reasoning behind it. This creates the record that journals need for transparency, appeals, and compliance with editorial policy.
Beyond these core functions, most systems also handle correspondence with authors and reviewers, conflict-of-interest declarations, plagiarism-screening integration, production handoff once a manuscript is accepted, and reporting on metrics like time-to-first-decision and reviewer turnaround.
The Major Systems Worth Comparing
Editorial Manager (Aries Systems)
Editorial Manager is one of the most widely used commercial platforms in scholarly publishing, built by Aries Systems and used across a large number of journals from major publishers as well as independent societies. Aries Systems was acquired by Elsevier in 2018, though Editorial Manager continues to be marketed and licensed to publishers outside the Elsevier portfolio, including direct competitors. It offers a mature, highly configurable workflow engine, detailed reporting, and integrations with common scholarly infrastructure. The tradeoff is cost and a learning curve: the interface is powerful but can feel dated, and full configuration typically requires working with Aries’ implementation team.
ScholarOne (Clarivate)
ScholarOne, owned by Clarivate (the same company behind the Web of Science and the Journal Citation Reports), is Editorial Manager’s closest commercial competitor and is used by a large number of journals across disciplines. It provides similar core functionality — configurable submission forms, reviewer matching tools, and decision-tracking — with tight integration into Clarivate’s broader research infrastructure. Like Editorial Manager, it is licensed on a negotiated basis tied to journal volume and publisher size, and larger publishers with many titles typically get more favorable terms than a single independent journal would.
Open Journal Systems (OJS, PKP)
Open Journal Systems is free, open-source software developed and maintained by the Public Knowledge Project (PKP), a research and development initiative housed at Simon Fraser University. OJS is by far the most widely deployed system among small and mid-sized journals worldwide, particularly society journals, university-affiliated journals, and journals based outside North America and Western Europe where commercial licensing costs are a bigger barrier. Because it is open source, a journal can self-host it at no licensing cost, though someone still needs to handle installation, updates, and server maintenance — or the journal can pay for hosting through PKP Publishing Services or a third-party OJS hosting provider. OJS is highly customizable through plugins and themes, but the interface is less polished out of the box than the commercial options, and getting the most out of it generally requires some technical comfort on staff.
Comparison at a Glance
| Criterion | Editorial Manager | ScholarOne | OJS (PKP) |
|---|---|---|---|
| Ownership | Aries Systems (Elsevier) | Clarivate | Public Knowledge Project (nonprofit) |
| Licensing cost | Commercial, quote-based | Commercial, quote-based | Free to self-host; paid hosting available |
| Typical user | Mid-to-large publishers, society journals | Mid-to-large publishers, especially Web of Science-affiliated titles | Small-to-mid journals, university presses, journals with limited budgets |
| Customizability | Moderate, via configuration and vendor support | Moderate, via configuration and vendor support | High, via open-source plugins and code access |
| Setup complexity | Vendor-managed implementation | Vendor-managed implementation | Self-managed or third-party hosted |
Key Selection Criteria
Cost and Licensing Model
Neither Editorial Manager nor ScholarOne publish standard price lists; both are licensed on a negotiated basis that depends on submission volume, number of titles, and contract length, which makes direct cost comparison difficult without requesting quotes from each vendor. OJS removes the licensing cost entirely but shifts the burden to hosting, maintenance, and (if needed) developer time, so the real cost comparison should include staff time, not just the invoice.
Integration with Crossref, ORCID, and Other Infrastructure
A modern manuscript management system should integrate cleanly with the identifier and metadata infrastructure the rest of scholarly publishing relies on. That means the ability to collect and verify author ORCID identifiers at submission, and workflows that make it straightforward to register Crossref DOIs and deposit reference lists once an article is accepted. All three systems discussed here support ORCID collection and Crossref-compatible metadata export in some form, but the depth and automation of that integration varies by version and configuration, so it is worth testing directly with your own workflow rather than taking a vendor’s feature list at face value.
Customizability and Workflow Fit
Every journal has its own review model — single-blind, double-blind, open, or some hybrid — and its own decision letters, reviewer forms, and escalation rules. The commercial systems handle most standard workflows well but require vendor involvement for deeper customization. OJS’s open architecture makes it possible to modify almost anything, which is valuable for journals with unusual editorial models but only pays off if someone on staff (or a hired developer) is comfortable working with the codebase.
Support for Small vs. Large Journals
Scale changes the calculation. A single independent journal negotiating alone with Aries or Clarivate is unlikely to get the pricing or support responsiveness that a large publisher managing dozens of titles receives. That asymmetry is a major reason OJS has become the default choice for many independent and society-run journals, particularly outside the largest commercial publishing houses, while Editorial Manager and ScholarOne dominate among large publishers who can negotiate enterprise-level contracts and who value the deeper reporting and support infrastructure that comes with them.
Practical Guidance for Choosing
Start by mapping your actual workflow — your review model, your typical volume, your staffing capacity — before looking at any vendor’s feature list. Request live demonstrations rather than relying on marketing materials, and specifically ask to see the reviewer-invitation and decision-letter workflows, since these are where day-to-day friction shows up. Ask current customers of comparable size about response times from support and about how painful upgrades or configuration changes have historically been. If budget is the binding constraint and you have any technical capacity on staff or through your institution, OJS is worth serious evaluation before committing to a multi-year commercial contract. If you are part of a larger publisher or society with existing infrastructure and negotiating leverage, the deeper reporting and dedicated support that come with Editorial Manager or ScholarOne may be worth the cost. In all cases, get any pricing, data-ownership, and data-export terms in writing before signing, so that migrating away later — if it ever becomes necessary — remains possible without losing your editorial history.
