Direct comparison
Editorial Manager vs ScholarOne vs OJS Compared
Editorial Manager, ScholarOne, and OJS compared: ownership, who uses each, and what authors/editors should expect from submission to decision.
Ask about Editorial Manager vs ScholarOne vs OJS Compared
Answers are drawn from this comparison and the rest of the CASRAI corpus, with a link to every source.
Answers are AI-generated from CASRAI’s own published pages and can be wrong, so check the linked sources before relying on one; your question is logged without personal data — never sold, never used to train a third-party model — to show us what CASRAI is missing, so please do not type personal or confidential details. How we use this
How do Editorial Manager, ScholarOne Manuscripts, OJS (Open Journal Systems) compare side by side?
The table below compares Editorial Manager, ScholarOne Manuscripts, OJS (Open Journal Systems) across 9 procurement-relevant dimensions, from vendor / steward through current release status.
Side-by-side comparison
| Dimension | Editorial Manager | ScholarOne Manuscripts | OJS (Open Journal Systems) |
|---|---|---|---|
| Vendor / steward | Aries Systems Corporation, an Elsevier company since 2018 | Silverchair, which acquired ScholarOne Manuscripts and Conferences from Clarivate in a deal that closed Nov 12, 2024 | Public Knowledge Project (PKP), a unit of Simon Fraser University |
| Licence / cost model | Proprietary u2014 licensed to a publisher/journal by Aries Systems | Proprietary u2014 licensed to a publisher/journal by Silverchair | Free, open source (GNU GPLv3) u2014 self-host, or pay a host/support provider (incl. PKP Publishing Services) |
| Typical publisher profile | Large commercial and society publishers, incl. Elsevier's own portfolio and Cell Press | Large commercial and society publishers, incl. Wiley's journal portfolio | Open-access, diamond/no-fee, university-press, and society journals u2014 ~44,000 journals in 148 countries per PKP |
| How an author identifies it | editorialmanager.com, per-journal branded portal | Silverchair/ScholarOne-branded submission URL, per-journal portal | The journal's own domain u2014 no shared vendor URL; look and required fields vary by installation |
| CRediT role capture (mid-2026) | Native, structured, since Editorial Manager 13.0 (2016); optional or required per journal | Native, structured; used across large portfolios such as Wiley's | Core support new in OJS 3.6; earlier versions relied on a community plugin, not built-in capture |
| JATS XML output | Native, with vocab-term-identifier tagging per ANSI/NISO Z39.104-2022 | Native | Not automatic in core u2014 depends on a plugin (e.g. PKP's JATS Template plugin) being installed |
| Peer-review workflow support | Enterprise-configurable, with a dedicated Aries/Elsevier account team | Enterprise-configurable, with a dedicated Silverchair account team | Configurable via open-source plugins; usually self-managed by the editorial team, or supported via PKP Publishing Services |
| Roadmap / feature control | Set by Aries Systems/Elsevier; publishers request features via the vendor relationship | Set by Silverchair; publishers request features via the vendor relationship | Set by PKP with an open community process (GitHub, PKP Community Forum); anyone can build a plugin |
| Current release status | Continuously updated SaaS; no publisher-facing version number | Continuously updated SaaS; no publisher-facing version number | OJS 3.4.0-10 (Nov 2025) is the current LTS release, supported to at least Jan 2027; OJS 3.5.0-4 (Apr 2026) and the OJS 3.6 line are newer, non-LTS releases |
Common questions
Common questions about Editorial Manager vs ScholarOne Manuscripts vs OJS (Open Journal Systems)
Do I choose which submission system to use as an author?
+
No u2014 the journal you're submitting to has already selected one. Which system it is has no bearing on manuscript quality or acceptance odds; it only affects the mechanics of submitting, tracking status, and completing peer-review steps.
How can I tell which system a journal uses before I submit?
+
Check the journal's 'submit a manuscript' or author-guidelines page, which links directly to the submission portal. The URL is also a signal: editorialmanager.com for Editorial Manager, or a Silverchair/ScholarOne-branded submission URL for ScholarOne; an OJS-based journal typically submits through its own journal website, since OJS has no shared vendor domain.
Does the system a journal uses affect how my CRediT contributor statement is captured?
+
It can. Editorial Manager and ScholarOne both offer native, structured CRediT role capture at submission. On an OJS-based journal, whether contributor roles are captured in structured form depends on whether that installation has adopted OJS's newer core CRediT support (OJS 3.6) or a CRediT plugin u2014 check the journal's own submission instructions if this matters for your funder or institutional reporting.
