What we've done so far
ScholarOne’s workflows have a 20-year legacy. Built over time, this product has evolved with each update, creating comprehensive workflows, robust functionality, and unwavering reliability. Our customers depend on these qualities to maintain the integrity and continuity of their publishing operations.However, as with any long-standing software system, the very longevity that has allowed ScholarOne to develop such depth of functionality has also introduced challenges. Technical complexity has accumulated over time, making innovation and velocity more difficult. The user interface, while familiar to long-time users, does not reflect contemporary design standards that users have come to expect in their digital experiences.
We know ScholarOne needs to modernize. We need more agility, a stronger user interface, and a more seamless user experience. We also need to remain on the cutting edge of research integrity solutions to ensure the ongoing quality of published research. When Silverchair acquired ScholarOne, we immediately prioritized evaluating the existing modernization efforts, and we knew it would remain top priority post-transition. We felt that we were uniquely equipped to tackle this process, as the Silverchair Platform had overcome similar modernization challenges in the past.
The Modernization Challenge
The challenge before us is significant but not unprecedented. How do we transform a complex, mission-critical application without disrupting the essential work it supports? How do we honor the platform's legacy while creating a foundation for future innovation?At Silverchair, we've navigated similar waters before with our own platform. This experience has taught us valuable lessons about balancing improvement with stability—lessons we're now applying to ScholarOne. We understand that scholarly publishing cannot pause while we rebuild; the flow of research and knowledge must continue uninterrupted.
Our Approach: Balanced, Strategic Evolution
Rather than pursuing a complete rewrite—which would be high-risk and potentially disruptive—or making only superficial changes, we're implementing a strategic, multi-faceted approach that addresses both immediate needs and long-term sustainability. Publishing workflows are complex and highly configurable, and many publishers can’t rely on lightweight, pared-down versions of the platform. ScholarOne customers deserve to continue leveraging the full scope of what ScholarOne offers already, and more.Following our strategic reassessment of ScholarOne Manuscripts, we’ve now aligned on an iterative approach that delivers continuous improvements across all aspects of the platform.
We have been diving deep into our application architecture to identify the greatest opportunities for improvement, prioritizing high-impact areas, and looking to upgrade all facets of our product and development workflow.Behind the scenes, we’ll be:
- Upgrading underlying technologies
- Refactoring high-impact areas of code
- Refining and enhancing development best practices
- Increasing testing robustness and automation.
With this approach, the entire organization is responsible for modernization with every new feature or area of focus. Centralized architecture governance allows all our development teams to orient around aligned goals and priorities. We’ll have clear modernization guidelines and will continually strive to enhance our level of excellence in software craftsmanship.
The ScholarOne technology teams and product teams are highly skilled with a wealth of experience in the platform. This approach harnesses that expertise, allowing ownership over key areas of focus for platform development, and aligning through a central architecture governance.
With our approach, more and more modernized code and interfaces encapsulate the legacy code and interfaces, overtaking it progressively, without a migration or transition period. Virtually every change to our application will serve to make the next change a little easier, and a little faster. Ultimately, it will ensure a more sustainable future for ScholarOne workflows and focus on the long-term viability of the product.
Software Development Techniques
The approach we’ve described for the ScholarOne platform is called The Strangler Fig Pattern. Named after the plant, which wraps around and ultimately kills its host tree, this strategy reduces risk while minimizing disruption.
It is an outcomes-oriented approach, which incrementally rewrites small parts of the codebase (in our case, as we pursue other improvements and new features) and switches on this new code while the old code is still running. Gradually, we’ll be able to transition more and more components of the codebase into this new system, and the old system will eventually cease to exist.
All the while, publishers can continue to use consistently improving technology without having to wait or migrate workflows, processes, and databases.
This type of software development is also known as the Ship of Theseus pattern, named for the classic paradox. In this thought experiment, we’re asked to imagine a ship made of wood that is gradually replaced one piece at a time. When all of the wood has been replaced, is it still the same ship?
To apply this thought experiment to ScholarOne, we say yes, it’s the same platform. ScholarOne is more than code: it is also the millions of researchers and manuscripts that progress through the workflows every day. Our function as publishing technology is to make it easy to share accurate, reliable, and groundbreaking information with the world.
Balancing quick wins with long-term optimization
One of the biggest benefits of this approach is that you’ll start to see the impact of our work much more quickly. By the second half of the year, we will have improved submission gateways for authors and reviewers.On top of the improvements we’re actively pursuing for ScholarOne Manuscripts, we’re also ensuring our publishers can pursue quick wins by enhancing the interoperability of our platform. We’re enhancing our API capabilities, as seen with our upcoming ScholarOne Relay so customers can directly address key priorities with technology integrations from other organizations.
Our Shared Roadmap
The technology that powers over 20% of the world’s peer review is too critical to progress and collective knowledge to either delay improvements while the underlying code is modernized or risk destabilizing the work that needs to continue to happen through these workflows. Based on Silverchair’s proven experience modernizing the Silverchair Platform, we are confident in our ability to strike the right balance of improvement, flexibility, and growth. But one thing we’ve also learned from developing the Silverchair Platform: our community matters.ScholarOne cannot successfully develop and improve without the engagement of our customers and their key user groups. We’ve reimagined how we connect with the ScholarOne community, and we hope to see you all in our webinars and in-person at the ScholarOne Summit.
We’re excited by our approach to modernizing ScholarOne and expect it to have positive impacts in the short and long term for all our customers. Let’s build that future together.