Long-term vision
As with all software development, there will be twists and turns along the way, but the vast majority of what we do will work towards a few key signposts. Orienting around this long-term vision ensures we remain consistent with the mission of ScholarOne technologies, while allowing for enough flexibility that we can pivot as needed in alignment with our Agile development approach.Today we’ll highlight four areas of investment to align with our long-term overarching goals of workflow modernization and end-to-end integration. ScholarOne is a critical piece of publishing infrastructure, and with 25 years under its belt, there are legacy components to the software that need attention.
Our key areas of focus for 2025 include:
Research Integrity
The entire research community remains under pressure from threats to research integrity. Whether the result of rushed science and mistakes or fraud, these challenges risk undermining trust in the scientific enterprise. Our peer review workflows play a more active role today than ever before to empower publishers to protect the quality of their corpus.For ScholarOne, our research integrity focus is agile, iterative, and strategic. We’re taking an industry approach by partnering with other providers in the integrity space, while also embedding new workflows into the ScholarOne infrastructure. Our goal is to relieve the burden on editors and peer reviewers by creating spaces for technology flags that evaluate risk or problems with incoming manuscripts.
Re-Imagined Experiences
The ScholarOne workflows serve many different stakeholders: authors submitting papers, peer reviewers evaluating science, editors keeping everything together and moving forward, and more. The experience of using the ScholarOne platform needs to improve to save each of those stakeholders time. Conducting research is challenging enough; let’s make the publishing process as headache-free as possible.That’s why our teams are focused on rethinking the Author, Reviewer, and Editor Experiences. For researchers and reviewers, the priority will be placed on ease of use, speed, satisfaction, and engagement. And for editors, we’re focused on improving that experience for automation, decision support, and workflows.
Interoperability & Modernization
Modernizing the underlying technology of ScholarOne is still a key part of our ongoing strategy. While much of this work will be invisible to customers, we are committed to addressing infrastructure upgrades and code refactoring.Ultimately, the goal of this work is to boost performance, security, interoperability, and agility. We want to balance this work with front-end initiatives around Experiences, to find the right combination of impactful change and long-term sustainability.
With the complexity of the ScholarOne software, we’re also focused in 2025 on increased interoperability. From the development of API solutions to new partnerships through the expansion of the Silverchair Universe program, we’re committed to providing customers with the flexibility they need.
Community-focus
The ScholarOne workflow product can only develop so far without the input and insight of our users and customers. To achieve that, 2025 will also focus heavily on communication, engagement, and community.We’re expanding our points of connection, with regular webinars for the ScholarOne publisher community, advisory groups to help influence and drive product development, and topical working groups to brainstorm and learn about the biggest issues facing our industry.
On top of that, in September, we’ll be hosting a dedicated in-person event for ScholarOne clients adjacent to our Platform Strategies conference: The ScholarOne Summit. Save the date (September 26 in Washington, DC)! Registration will open in May, and we can’t wait to connect with our ScholarOne community for a collaborative, impactful day.
There are many exciting improvements and features in flight for the ScholarOne workflows. We’re excited to start sharing new initiatives, pilots, and projects throughout the year. 2025 marks 25 years of ScholarOne (our silver anniversary, making it a fortuitous time to join Silverchair!), and it is shaping up to be the best one yet.