Now, as we mark this first anniversary, I'm grateful to share what we've accomplished together and where we're headed next.
Operational Integration
In the first six months as a unified organization, we migrated all major systems and functions to Silverchair—customer invoicing, Salesforce, financial systems, support infrastructure, and technology platforms. These operational changes occurred alongside the equally important team integrations – cross-training on products, unification of our Customer Success approach, adoption of best practices on both sides, and generally getting to know each other as we worked together under shared values.Every decision centered on one question: how do we maintain continuity for publishers while positioning ScholarOne for its next chapter of growth?
The operational metrics tell part of the story. ScholarOne Manuscripts launched 475 new sites in the past twelve months, a six percent increase. The platform processed 3.9 million submissions, up sixteen percent year-over-year. These numbers represent editors making decisions, authors submitting research, and reviewers contributing their expertise without disruption during a major transition.
But operational stability was always the baseline, not the goal.
Building Momentum Through Product Innovation
With integration fundamentals in place, we've shifted our energy toward innovation. The five priorities driving ScholarOne's 2025 roadmap represent what we've heard from publishers, editors, and authors: improving the author and editor experience, research integrity, AI for peer review, tech modernization, and integration opportunities. And we’ve delivered progress in every one of these areas.Here is just some of what we’ve achieved this year:
- ScholarOne Gateway: The new user experience fundamentally redesigns how authors and reviewers interact with the system. It isn't just more modern—it's more intuitive, reducing friction in the submission process and creating space for publishers to engage their author communities more effectively. Discovery research for the editor and administrator experience is already underway, applying the same user-centered design approach to all our workflows.
- Research Integrity: The release of the new two-way Relay API led to new partnerships with Signals, Clear Skies, Cactus, and the STM Integrity Hub to bring best-in-class screening tools directly into ScholarOne workflows. These new integrations reflect our commitment to reinforcing research integrity by giving publishers access to all the best-in-class offerings, and there are even more in the pipeline.
- AI Innovation: Silverchair’s renowned AI Playground extended to ScholarOne in May, offering a safe environment for publishers and editors to experiment with AI applications. The editorial assistant beta is poised to streamline reviewer guidance and manuscript assessment, setting the stage for the future of AI-enhanced peer review. Citation analysis capabilities are expanding. These aren't speculative projects—they're practical tools addressing real workflow challenges, developed in partnership with publishers who understand their needs better than we ever could.
- Technical modernization: This work is less visible but equally important and underpins much of the work we’re planning for 2026 and beyond. We've already completed major infrastructure upgrades and established modernization patterns that will accelerate our future development.
- Universe Expansion: Silverchair's community approach extends to how we think about the ecosystem. The Silverchair Universe program, which was expanded in January and now includes ScholarOne partners, simplifies integration for publishers. We believe that when publishers have easier access to complementary technologies, everyone benefits.
Client-Led Growth
Everything we're building emerges from conversation with our community. Community has always been central to how Silverchair operates, so we were quick to extend our high-touch engagement model to ScholarOne’s thriving community of over 9,000 journals and conferences. Our collaborative approach includes transparent product development strategies, regular roadmap updates, and direct lines of communication with leadership.We expanded our points of connection through regular client webinars to share product and company updates, advisory groups to influence product development, and new topical working groups to tackle the biggest challenges facing the industry.
This investment in community engagement reflects our understanding that ScholarOne can only develop as far as our users and customers guide us. In September, we hosted the first annual ScholarOne Summit—a dedicated in-person event that provided a full day of learning, brainstorming, and networking, with roadmap updates and new ways of working that give publishers a clearer sense of Silverchair's goals and tools.
The response from the community has been overwhelmingly positive – but I’ll let you hear it from them directly. We're not just maintaining ScholarOne's existing community—we're investing in its growth and actively sharing what we learn along the way (as exemplified in the inaugural Future of Peer Review Report).
The Foundation of Our Success
Of course, at the core of all of this is the Silverchairians themselves. None of our achievements in the past year would have been possible without their hard work, their willingness to embrace change and grow together, or their incredible capacity for learning and collaborating.Bringing together two organizations of similar scale demands more than operational planning—it requires deep intentionality about culture, values, and people. That’s why we committed to a people-first strategy that went beyond retention to meaningful investment in leadership and culture integration.
What followed was both exhilarating and challenging—our new colleagues repeatedly described experiencing "the best kind of culture shock" as they encountered Silverchair's collaborative, values-driven approach. We also made mistakes and had to pivot when concerns arose, reminding us that living our values means solving problems with creativity and empathy while being honest about what's feasible.
The integration has already enriched Silverchair's culture in tangible ways and we quickly discovered how much we have in common: curious and open-minded, hardworking and committed, goofy and irreverent in equal measure. The cultural consonance between our organizations wasn't luck—it reflected shared values about partnership, innovation, and serving the scholarly community that made this integration not just possible, but energizing. As we reach the one-year mark, we’re very happily surprised by the high levels of employee sentiment and operational cohesion across the unified organization—a feat that felt almost too immense to wish for in just 12 short months.
These results reflect something we've worked hard to build: a culture where everyone feels ownership over our shared mission. From day one, we integrated the organizations rather than treating ScholarOne as an acquisition to be absorbed. The ScholarOne name remains (now with its own logo and brand identity) because it means something to our community.
The Path Ahead
We’re not stopping here; there’s a lot of work to do as we continue to invest and improve ScholarOne’s core infrastructure, user interfaces and feature roadmap. We're acknowledging progress while recognizing how much work remains. ScholarOne has been serving the scholarly publishing community for 25 years—ScholarOne’s Silver anniversary happens to coincide with joining Silverchair. The platforms that have supported millions of submissions and shaped how peer review works don't transform overnight, nor should they, when reliability and uptime are critical to our publishers.Our approach to modernization is iterative and strategic. We're upgrading underlying technologies, refactoring high-impact areas of code, increasing testing robustness and automation, and refining product development practices—all under centralized architecture governance. We're balancing quick wins with long-term optimization because our publishers need both.
The 2026 growth strategy we're building reflects this balanced approach. Continued investment in core infrastructure. Expanded integration capabilities. Enhanced user experiences that respect the workflows editors and publishers have refined over decades. Research integrity tools that protect scholarly publishing's reputation. AI applications that augment rather than replace human judgment.
This work happens because of the 250-plus Silverchairians who show up every day committed to serving scholarship. It happens because of publishers who provide feedback, participate in working groups, and push us to do better. It happens because the scholarly publishing community recognizes that strong, independent infrastructure matters.
For us, the last year represents something fundamental: the publishing lifecycle works best when connected by infrastructure designed to serve publishers rather than extract value from them. ScholarOne at the beginning of the content workflow, the Silverchair Platform at the end, and services spanning everything in between—this creates possibilities we're only beginning to explore.
At Silverchair, we believe that innovation and technology can help fulfill the greatest promise of scholarship. After one year together, that belief feels less like aspiration and more like momentum.