It was my great privilege last month to facilitate a virtual workshop on the topic of The Place of Manuscript Management Systems in a Consolidating Marketplace. These services are at the heart of the publisher workflow, and they are the basis of fascinating consolidation today. Elsevier’s acquisition of Aries has brought its competition with Clarivate, which owns ScholarOne. Can these providers integrate manuscript management into their broader publishing and discovery workflows quickly enough? What are the benefits of being neutral, as is Clarivate, or being connected with a major publisher like Elsevier? In turn, the CoKo open source alternative argues that it can drive down price and complexity. Can it scale up to offer meaningful competition? The overview and agenda of the workshop is available here. An abridged video containing analysis and discussion of the workshop is also available below.

NFAIS hosted the workshop, and it was a special pleasure to work closely with Nancy Blair-DeLeon to plan the event. Our speakers were Gregg Gordon of Elsevier, Keith Collier of Clarivate, and Alison O’Connell and Kristen Ratan of CoKo. Lisa Janicke Hinchliffe (who wrote an important recent analysis) and David Worlock (who writes insightfully on the market for scholarly publishing tools) formed an impressive panel of discussants. And I offered framing and concluding remarks.

It was a fascinating workshop, and I encourage you to take the time to learn about this important part of the marketplace by watching the recording.