ScholarOne Manuscripts (often shown in a browser tab as “Manuscript Central”) is one of the two commercial, vendor-hosted submission-and-peer-review platforms most authors encounter, alongside Editorial Manager and OJS — see that comparison for how the three platforms differ at a high level. This guide covers ScholarOne specifically: the actual screens and steps an author works through, from account creation to watching a manuscript move through peer review. Because each journal configures its own ScholarOne site — enabling or requiring different fields, reviewer-suggestion options, and file types — step count and exact wording vary by journal, but the underlying sequence below is consistent across virtually every ScholarOne-based submission.
What ScholarOne Manuscripts Is
ScholarOne Manuscripts is a peer-review and manuscript-tracking platform historically associated with Clarivate (as owner of the Web of Science Group); in a deal that closed November 12, 2024, Silverchair acquired ScholarOne Manuscripts and ScholarOne Conferences from Clarivate, with Clarivate/Web of Science Group continuing to provide certain author- and reviewer-recognition services on a resale basis. Wiley is among the large publishers whose journals run on ScholarOne, alongside many society and university-press titles. Authors don’t choose to use ScholarOne — the journal they’re submitting to has already selected it as its submission system, and every ScholarOne-based journal has its own separately branded submission site, typically reached from a “Submit a Manuscript” link on the journal’s own author-guidelines page rather than a single shared URL.
Before You Begin: Creating or Accessing Your Account
Every ScholarOne journal site requires an account before you can start a submission. If you’ve ever submitted to, reviewed for, or edited any other journal that also runs on ScholarOne, check whether you already have an account before creating a new one — ScholarOne accounts are per-journal-site rather than shared across every ScholarOne-hosted journal, so a “duplicate account” check on the login screen (searching by name and email) is worth doing regardless. Most ScholarOne journal sites offer sign-in or account linking via ORCID, which lets the system pull your name and affiliation directly from your ORCID record and reduces the amount of author-information you have to re-key by hand; connecting your ORCID iD to the account is worth doing even if the journal doesn’t require it, since some publishers now expect a validated ORCID for at least the corresponding author. Account creation itself asks for standard details — name, institutional affiliation, email, a small number of subject-classification checkboxes the journal uses to route your manuscript and suggest reviewers.
Starting a New Submission
Once logged in, your landing page is the Author Center, which lists any manuscripts you have in progress, under review, or with a decision recorded, plus a “Start New Submission” (sometimes labelled “Click here to submit a new manuscript”) link or button. Selecting it opens a multi-step submission wizard. ScholarOne moves you through this wizard one screen at a time; each screen ends with a “Save and Continue” action that both saves your progress and advances you, and a “Previous” action to go back. Because progress is saved at each step, you can generally log out mid-submission and resume later from the Author Center rather than starting over — useful for a submission with several co-authors whose details you may not have to hand all at once.
Step 1: Manuscript Type, Title, and Abstract
The wizard opens by asking you to select a manuscript type from a journal-specific list (original research article, review, brief communication, case report, and so on — the exact options are set by that journal, not by ScholarOne generically), then enter the manuscript’s title and abstract as plain text. Some journals also collect a running head or short title here. Whatever you enter becomes the record ScholarOne uses on your Author Center dashboard and in editor- and reviewer-facing screens, so it should match your manuscript file exactly.
Step 2: Keywords and Classifications
Next you supply keywords and, on many journals, one or more subject classifications drawn from a controlled list the journal maintains. These aren’t cosmetic: editors commonly use classification selections to route a submission to an appropriate handling editor and to suggest potential reviewers with matching expertise, so picking accurate, specific classifications (rather than the broadest category available) can materially affect how quickly your manuscript is assigned.
Step 3: Authors and Institutions
This is where you add every co-author and designate the corresponding author. ScholarOne has you search for each co-author by email address first, since the system checks whether that person already has an account on the journal’s site; if a match exists you attach their existing profile, and if not you enter their name, affiliation, and email to create one on their behalf. Co-author details entered here must match the title page of the manuscript file itself — ScholarOne does not reconcile the two automatically, and a mismatch (a missing middle initial, a co-author left off one but not the other) is one of the most common reasons an editorial office sends a submission back before it even reaches peer review. Adding every co-author at this step also matters beyond the submission record: it’s what puts each co-author into the journal’s production system so they’re correctly acknowledged on the published article and can, on some journals, receive their own ScholarOne notifications about the manuscript’s progress. You (the submitting author) are not always automatically the corresponding author — ScholarOne lets you flag a different co-author as corresponding, and the system uses that flag to route decision letters and revision requests. See CASRAI’s guide to corresponding-author responsibilities for what that designation actually obligates the named person to do after submission, and the CASRAI comparison of corresponding author vs. co-author vs. contributing author if your author list includes roles beyond a straightforward co-author list, such as a group or consortium authorship structure.
Step 4: Details, Funding, and Reviewers
Most ScholarOne configurations collect several more items on this screen or the next: a cover letter (either pasted as text or uploaded as a file — see CASRAI’s worked cover letter example and the cover letter dictionary entry if you haven’t drafted one), funding source and grant-number fields, data-availability statements, and any journal-specific ethics or conflict-of-interest declarations. Many ScholarOne journals also let (or require) you to suggest potential reviewers by name and email, and separately to name reviewers you’d prefer the editor avoid, typically with a short justification for either. Suggesting reviewers doesn’t obligate the editor to use them, but a well-justified suggestion can shorten the time an editor spends searching for reviewer coverage in a narrow subfield.
Step 5: Uploading Your Files
File upload usually asks for each component separately — title page, main manuscript document, individual figure files, tables, and any supplemental material — and the order in which you attach them determines the order they appear in the auto-generated PDF proof, so upload title page first, then manuscript text, then figures, then tables, then supplements, unless the journal’s instructions specify otherwise. ScholarOne accepts common formats (Word, LaTeX source with associated files, PDF, and standard image formats for figures) but each journal sets its own accepted file types and size limits, so check the journal’s specific author instructions rather than assuming a format that worked for one ScholarOne journal will work for another. After you finish uploading, ScholarOne converts everything into a single combined PDF for you to review before final submission.
Step 6: Reviewing the Auto-Generated PDF Proof
Before you can submit, ScholarOne builds a merged PDF from every file you uploaded and displays it for your approval. This step exists specifically to catch conversion problems — a figure that didn’t render, a table that broke across pages, a missing file — before the manuscript reaches an editorial office, so it’s worth actually opening and checking the proof rather than clicking through it. If something is wrong, you go back to the file-upload step, fix or re-upload the affected file, and the system regenerates the proof.
Step 7: Final Submission
The last screen is a summary of everything entered across the previous steps — manuscript details, full author list with the corresponding author flagged, and the file list — with a final “Submit” action. Once submitted, you (and, depending on journal configuration, your co-authors) receive a confirmation email with a manuscript ID number, which becomes the reference number for all further correspondence about that submission.
Tracking Your Manuscript’s Status After Submission
Once submitted, your manuscript appears under “Submitted Manuscripts” on your Author Center dashboard, showing a current status that updates as the manuscript moves through the journal’s editorial workflow. Commonly seen ScholarOne status labels include, roughly in sequence: Submitted to Journal, Editor Assigned, Awaiting Reviewer Selection (the handling editor is identifying potential reviewers), Awaiting Reviewer Assignment and Awaiting Reviewer Invitation Responses (invitations have gone out and the editor is waiting to hear back), Under Review (reviewers have agreed and are actively assessing the manuscript), Reviews Completed or Awaiting Recommendation, and finally a decision status such as Decision in Process before a formal decision letter is issued. Status labels and their exact wording vary somewhat by journal configuration, and it’s normal for status to move backward as well as forward — for example, from “Awaiting Reviewer Selection” back to itself, or from “Under Review” back to “Awaiting Reviewer Assignment,” if an invited reviewer who initially accepted later declines and the editor has to find a replacement. That fluctuation reflects normal peer-review logistics, not a problem with your submission. If a manuscript appears stalled at one status for an unusually long time relative to the journal’s stated review timeline, the appropriate next step is a polite status inquiry to the journal’s editorial office, either through ScholarOne’s own contact mechanism or the email address in the journal’s author guidelines — not repeated resubmission.
Submitting a Revision
If your manuscript receives a decision inviting a revision, you do not start a new submission. The decision-letter email and your Author Center dashboard both provide a “Create a Revision” (or similarly labelled) link tied to the original manuscript record, which carries forward your prior author list, metadata, and manuscript ID (usually with a revision suffix, such as -R1) rather than treating the revised paper as an unrelated new submission. You’ll typically be asked to upload a clean revised manuscript, a version with tracked changes or highlighted edits, and a point-by-point response to reviewers addressing each comment. See CASRAI’s comparison of peer review response letters across publishers for what that response document should contain.
Common ScholarOne Submission Problems and How to Fix Them
- PDF proof fails to build or renders incorrectly. Usually a file-format or corruption issue with one specific upload (often figures) rather than the whole batch — remove and re-upload the affected file individually rather than restarting the whole submission.
- A co-author’s details don’t match across steps. Author names, affiliations, and email addresses entered in the Authors and Institutions step must match the title page exactly; a mismatch is a common reason an editorial office returns a submission for correction before it’s sent out for review.
- Can’t find an existing account. Search by email address before creating a new profile for yourself or a co-author — duplicate accounts on the same journal site can fragment your submission history and, for co-authors, delay production acknowledgment.
- Uncertainty about which of several ScholarOne-hosted journals a login belongs to. Because accounts are per-journal-site rather than universal, bookmark the specific journal’s submission URL from its author-guidelines page rather than relying on a generic ScholarOne or Manuscript Central search.
- Status appears to move backward. As covered above, this is typically a reviewer-availability change, not an error in your submission.
Frequently Asked Questions
How do I create a ScholarOne account?
From the specific journal’s submission site (linked from its author-guidelines page), select “Create Account” and provide your name, institutional affiliation, and email; most journals also offer ORCID-based sign-in or account linking, which can pre-fill your name and affiliation from your ORCID record.
Can I use my ORCID iD to sign in to ScholarOne?
Most ScholarOne journal sites support ORCID for authentication or account linking. Connecting your ORCID iD is worth doing even where it’s optional, since it reduces re-keying of your name and affiliation and some publishers expect a validated ORCID for the corresponding author.
How do I add a co-author who doesn’t already have a ScholarOne account?
In the Authors and Institutions step, search by the co-author’s email address; if no existing profile is found, enter their name, affiliation, and email directly and ScholarOne creates a profile for them as part of your submission.
What does “Awaiting Reviewer Selection” mean?
It means the handling editor is still identifying which potential reviewers to invite — checking subject-matter fit, availability, and conflicts of interest — before any invitations have gone out. This is normal and precedes “Awaiting Reviewer Assignment” or “Under Review.”
How do I check the status of my manuscript?
Log in to the journal’s ScholarOne site and open the Author Center; your manuscript is listed under “Submitted Manuscripts” with its current status. Status can fluctuate as reviewer invitations are accepted, declined, or reassigned.
Is submitting a revision the same as submitting a brand-new manuscript?
No. A revision is submitted through the “Create a Revision” link tied to your original manuscript record, which preserves the manuscript ID (typically with an -R1 suffix) and prior metadata, rather than through “Start New Submission.”
Related CASRAI Resources
- Editorial Manager vs. ScholarOne vs. OJS: Manuscript Submission Systems Compared
- Corresponding Author Responsibilities: What ICMJE Actually Requires
- Corresponding Author vs. Co-Author vs. Contributing Author
- Journal Cover Letter: A Worked, Annotated Example
- Peer Review Response Letters: Major vs. Minor Revisions Across Publisher Templates
- PLOS ONE Journal Submission Guide (an example of a specific journal’s own submission requirements layered on top of its platform)
- JATS XML and CRediT in JATS XML, for how contributor-role data captured at submission carries through to published metadata
