This is peer review in 2026. The volume is unsustainable. The integrity threats are evolving faster than detection methods. And editorial teams are expected to maintain the same rigor that validates the scholarly record, except with half the time and twice the submissions.
ScholarOne Manuscripts handles peer review for millions of manuscripts every year because this workflow is mission-critical. We can make ScholarOne Manuscripts smarter, faster, and more resilient against external pressures. Here's how we’re doing it this year:
Getting manuscripts to the right place, faster
Author Gateway, launched in late 2025, creates a unified submission experience across your entire journal portfolio, and in 2026 we're making it genuinely useful instead of just convenient. Deep links throughout workflows mean authors land exactly where they need to be. AI-enabled journal matching (a future beta release we’re exploring) ensures manuscripts go to the right journal the first time, eliminating the transfer shuffle that wastes weeks. Later this year, we're exploring how to expand Gateway's core features to make cross-journal transfers actually seamless.Up next for Gateway, we have some additional exciting configuration developments. Publishers will be able to configure custom badges to highlight key information about journals in Journal Finder, while configuration changes made in ScholarOne Manuscripts will automatically sync to Gateway, eliminating duplicate work for updates like admin contacts or journal logos. Authors will benefit from a new preview feature that lets them view submission requirements and form fields before starting a draft, helping them prepare materials in advance.
On the review side, we're prototyping reviewer matching solutions that go beyond keyword overlap. Our system understands expertise, availability, review history, and disciplinary networks because we've been tracking this data for decades across hundreds of publishers. The Editor AI Console (beta) helps with manuscript screening and tedious manual tasks, freeing editors to focus on the judgment calls that require expertise.
When the right manuscripts reach the right reviewers without editors spending hours on matchmaking, the entire process accelerates. That's not efficiency for its own sake, instead it's protecting editors from burnout while maintaining quality.
Making decisions with confidence, catching problems with context
We spent 2025 interviewing editors to understand what information they actually need to make confident decisions (check back next week for our interview takeaways). In 2026, those insights become prototypes. Our editor dashboards and redesigned manuscript views surface critical information without burying it in tabs and menus will form the foundation for Editor Gateway, bringing the same streamlined experience to editorial workflows that Author Gateway brings to submissions.But speed without safety is reckless. Our Unusual Activity Detector is expanding in 2026 to include relationship analysis, clique detection, and prolific author analysis. These tools don't automatically flag problems: they reveal patterns so editors can investigate with full context. When you see that an author, three reviewers, and an editor all share institutional ties and publication histories, that's not proof of fraud. It's a signal worth examining.
This is where ScholarOne's scale becomes your advantage. We've been building research integrity tools for a decade. Our longitudinal view of submission patterns, author behavior, and reviewer networks across 600+ publishers creates pattern detection that competitors can't replicate with smaller datasets or shorter timeframes. As paper mills get more sophisticated and AI-generated manuscripts become harder to spot, these integrity insights aren't nice-to-have. They're essential infrastructure for protecting the scholarly record.
The foundation that makes everything else possible
None of these developments work without enterprise-grade reliability. Our 2026 modernization work will include Cognos analytics updates, refined authentication architecture, and security improvements that keep ScholarOne stable at scale. This isn't the glamorous work, but it's what lets you trust the system when you're managing hundreds of submissions across multiple journals.It's also a given that ScholarOne will continue to pursue ongoing improvements to reduce support case volume and resolution time throughout 2026, including enhanced integration tooling to streamline setup and updates to custom question creation and management. Interoperability will expand as data from Relay integrations becomes available on manuscript checklist and reviewer selection pages, with additional use cases planned as the functionality matures.
Building on what only ScholarOne has
We release new features 3-4 times per year because peer review workflows can't tolerate half-tested tools pushed to production every sprint. Features get deep development, extensive configuration options, and thorough testing before anything goes live.Our approach is collaborative by design. Those editor interviews inform our dashboard prototypes. Our integrity roadmap comes from analyzing patterns across millions of submissions. Publisher Working Groups test early versions and tell us what actually works in production environments. We're not guessing what editors need: we're building from evidence.
Here's what peer review looks like without this infrastructure: editors drowning in submissions they can't evaluate quickly enough, paper mills exploiting gaps in integrity detection, and publishers stitching together tools that don't share data or surface patterns. Here's what it looks like with it: editorial teams making faster decisions with better information, integrity threats visible before they become retractions, and a peer review system that adapts to new challenges without breaking under pressure.
The scholarly record depends on peer review working. We’re building on ScholarOne’s foundation to make sure you can continue to depend on us.