The transition to Open Access (OA) business models and subsequent funding mandates have introduced many challenges for publishers, including an additional level of complexity to their publishing workflows. One significant outcome of these new mandates was the need for publishers to manage various article processing charges (APCs), which lead to the development of Copyright Clearance Center’s (CCC) to develop RightsLink for Scientific Communications (RLSC). However, early in the development of RLSC, CCC determined that in order to offer publishers a truly integrated workflow solution, we needed to partner with other key players working with authors and reviewers.
Enter Aries Systems
To incorporate APC estimation, collection, and management directly within existing publishing workflows, Aries Systems and CCC announced their strategic collaboration to integrate RLSC with Editorial Manager® (EM) and ProduXion Manager® (PM), the leading peer review and production tracking systems, in 2015. Since its release, this seamless solution streamlines the process for both the submitting author and the publisher and delivers value to all stakeholders in the open scholarly publishing space to support growth in the OA market.
Continued Evolution and Focus on the Author
As market forces began to shift the focus to not only managing individual author APCs, but to supporting new OA institutional agreements, CCC and Aries continued to collaborate to solve for this need. In January 2021, publishers using RLSC could now inform authors of available OA publication funding throughout the manuscript lifecycle, starting with submission.
To support the successful and sustainable transition to OA, increased education and visibility should be offered to authors in regard to their funding options throughout the manuscript lifecycle. Authors have long struggled with the administrative burden required to identify, secure, and manage eligible OA publication funding from various sources. Heightened awareness increases publisher compliance with many transformative agreements including Read and Publish, many of which set expectations that manuscripts meeting the terms of the agreements will be published OA without fail.
CCC and Aries make it possible to connect author affiliation to funding eligibility early in the manuscript lifecycle, providing an important missing link between the various workflow stakeholders involved in the manuscript submission process – an element that is often identified as a major pain point by those working in open scholarly publishing.
Collaboration is the Key
The arrangement between CCC and Aries is not just a software integration. Our teams work closely together to solicit and share publisher feedback, participate in community discussions and events, and identify ways that we can continue to provide a first-rate user experience and seamless end-to-end workflow for authors and publications. We are dedicated to listening to publishers, funders, authors,
and other key stakeholders, and tightly collaborating to ensure our combined offering continues to meet the ever-evolving needs of the scholarly publishing ecosystem.