Academic Journal Peer Review Software: Build Custom or Buy Editorial Manager, ScholarOne or Open Journal Systems
Under about ten journals with conventional review, buy: Editorial Manager, ScholarOne or Open Journal Systems will carry you and the money belongs in editorial staff instead.
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Under about ten journals with conventional review, buy: Editorial Manager, ScholarOne or Open Journal Systems will carry you and the money belongs in editorial staff instead. The threshold flips somewhere north of forty titles running several review models side by side, and even then the deciding question is not features but release cadence. If your editorial roadmap is waiting on another company's configuration queue, a build pays. If your editorial strategy has been stable for years, it does not, and most publishers reading this are in the second group.
When is off the shelf genuinely the right call here?
Editorial Manager and ScholarOne are mature, heavily used and reliable, and they run very large portfolios every day. Rebuilding either for a small portfolio is a poor use of a society's reserves, and we say that to boards regularly.
Buy if this is you:
- Under about ten journals, with conventional single or double anonymised review across most of them.
- No integrity requirement beyond similarity checking and an editor's judgement.
- No transformative agreements at scale, so article processing charge (APC) entitlement is an occasional question rather than a daily one.
- An editorial strategy that has been stable for several years.
- No engineering team, and no intention of hiring one.
Two alternatives deserve naming. Open Journal Systems (OJS) is a serious answer for a university press or a society with a technical owner on staff and a modest portfolio. It is open, genuinely flexible and carries no licence fee, and the price of that is owning hosting, upgrades and security patching yourself. Presses that adopt it without naming an owner tend to be running an unpatched version within two years, which converts a saving into a risk the board eventually hears about.
eJournalPress is worth a hard look if your editorial models are unusual but your portfolio is not large. Its configurability is real, and for a society with one awkward review workflow it can remove the entire argument for building. Publishers often reach for a custom system because one packaged product said no, and it is worth checking whether a different packaged product would have said yes.
When does a custom build actually pay off?
The argument for building in scholarly publishing is rarely about features and almost always about who controls the release schedule. Both major platforms handle an enormous range of configurations. The constraint at scale is that configuration typically runs through the vendor's professional services team, so a new review model or a new submission gate becomes a change request in a queue rather than something your team ships in a sprint.
A publisher whose editorial strategy is a differentiator cannot have that strategy gated by another company's backlog. A publisher whose strategy is stable does not have the problem and should not spend the money.
In practice the threshold sits somewhere north of forty titles with several review models running side by side. Build when at least two of these hold:
- Vendor configuration queues are visibly slowing your roadmap, and workarounds have accumulated in spreadsheets.
- Integrity screening spans more than three tools and nobody has a case view that puts the signals together.
- You operate transformative agreements at scale and entitlement is resolved by a person after acceptance rather than at submission.
- You need portfolio wide pattern detection across journals, because paper mills specifically exploit journals being treated as islands.
- Your parent organisation has a data residency or archival requirement no hosted vendor will meet.
The payoff, when it arrives, is that workflow becomes data. A journal is a configuration carrying its stages, roles, blinding rules, required declarations, deadlines and letter templates. Launching a new title is an afternoon. Changing one journal's model carries no risk to the other three hundred.
How do they compare on the things that matter in this industry?
Blinding. Double anonymised review is a data access rule, not a display rule. It has to hold across the interface, the emails, the attachments, the author property inside submitted word processor files and the audit log. Ask any vendor or developer how they enforce it in file metadata, because that is where identities leak first.
Reviewer capacity. Packaged systems hold a reviewer database and a reminder schedule. What they generally do not do is model capacity across your whole portfolio, so a reviewer with three manuscripts open across sibling journals still receives a fourth invitation this week. That is a portfolio level fact and it needs a portfolio level view.
Integrity. A score dropped into a field is not a case. Similarity, image duplication, tortured phrasing, retracted references and submission pattern anomalies arrive in different formats from different tools, and the value is in weighting them against your own policy, opening a case, and holding evidence, correspondence and a named decision maker together. When a story runs about a paper you published, the question is what you knew and when.
Entitlement timing. Editorial systems were not designed to resolve APC entitlement at submission, so it happens later, by a person, against a spreadsheet. The timing is wrong. Authors need the answer before they choose where to submit, and getting it wrong at acceptance produces an invoice to an author whose institution should have covered the charge.
Custody. You are custodian of a scholarly record that has to outlive any vendor relationship. Whichever way you go, get a documented and tested export path covering attachments and review history before go live rather than at renewal.
What does total cost of ownership look like at your scale?
On the build side, from Digital Heroes delivery experience, a focused first release covering submission with configurable checks, editor assignment, reviewer invitation and workflow, and decision handling with letter generation runs $80,000 to $180,000 and ships in 14 to 20 weeks. A full platform adding integrity case management, entitlement resolution, production handoff, Crossref and repository deposits and board reporting runs $250,000 to $600,000 phased across 9 to 18 months.
A representative society publisher with around sixty journals, twelve of them in a pilot group sharing one review model, three screening vendors and two consortium agreements, lands near $412,000 all in. Fifty thousand of that is migrating five years of manuscripts with attachments and review history. Adding the other forty eight titles afterwards is configuration rather than construction.
Annually, budget continuing engineering of roughly a sixth of build cost. On a $412,000 platform that is around $70,000 a year and it is genuinely consumed: funder deposit requirements change, screening vendors alter their output, a new consortium agreement arrives with different capacity rules, and a new title wants a model nobody anticipated. Budget an engineer, not a support contract.
On the buy side, take your annual fee and then add every professional services invoice from the last twenty four months, because configuration change requests are where a packaged system's real cost surfaces at portfolio scale and they rarely reach the renewal conversation. Then add the staff hours spent on entitlement spreadsheets, manual reviewer chasing, assembling integrity evidence from four tools and rebuilding the same board report each quarter. In the publishers we have worked with, that second figure is larger than the licence.
What does the hybrid look like, and when is it the honest answer?
Keep the submission system and build the layer around it. For most publishers past the buy threshold but short of a full rewrite, this is the correct move, and it usually costs a quarter of a platform.
Four pieces are worth building on their own:
- An integrity case layer. Signals from every screening tool land against the manuscript, weighted by your policy, opening a case with evidence and a named decision maker. It reads from the submission system rather than replacing it, and it is the piece that gives you cross portfolio queries.
- An entitlement service. Resolve APC coverage from institutional and funder identifiers at submission, check the agreement and its remaining capacity for the year, and hand the answer back to the submission screen and forward to production.
- A deposit and correction pipeline. Crossref with funder and licence metadata, repository deposits, a Journal Article Tag Suite (JATS) round trip with your typesetter, and correction and retraction as a first class workflow on versioned records rather than a status field somebody edits.
- Reviewer matching and capacity. Suggestions drawn from the abstract against publication records, conflict checks that return a reason rather than a flag, and invitation batching that respects capacity across the portfolio.
Two further points about the hybrid. Your portfolio does not have to be uniform to be well run, and leaving low volume society titles on OJS while flagship journals sit on a hosted platform is a legitimate steady state. And if you do eventually build, pilot on ten to fifteen titles that already share a review model, because the second journal on a model is close to free while the first journal on a new model is where the money goes.
Which should you choose, by operator size and stage?
Find your row and act on it.
- One to ten journals, conventional review. Buy Editorial Manager or ScholarOne, or run OJS if you have a named technical owner. Put the money into editorial staff, which moves time to first decision more than software will.
- Under ten journals with one unusual review model. Look at eJournalPress before commissioning anything. One awkward workflow is not a build case.
- Ten to forty journals, several models, growing integrity workload. Stay on the packaged system and build the integrity case layer above it. That is the piece with the worst gap and the highest consequence.
- Forty or more journals with transformative agreements at scale. Add the entitlement service next, resolved at submission. It protects revenue and author experience at once and pays back faster than the rest.
- Large portfolio where the vendor queue is setting your roadmap. Build the platform, phased. First release on a single review model, one full editorial cycle through it before anything else is built, migration alongside phase two rather than in front of it.
Two conditions apply to every build row. Spend properly on discovery, meaning three to four weeks writing down what each review model actually does including the steps that currently live only in an editorial assistant's memory. And do not let anyone automate a decision. Reviewer matching, conflict detection and signal aggregation are fair game because a human still judges. Acceptance, rejection and final reviewer selection are the thing you sell.
If you want a second opinion before signing anything, Digital Heroes contracts through India LLP, US LLC and UK LTD entities, so the agreement and the intellectual property assignment sit under law your own advisers already read. You can take that specification to any other firm on your shortlist.
The evidence behind this guide
Independent findings on why this investment pays off. Every link goes to the primary source.
- Only 22% of firms are 'future ready' having significantly transformed digitally; these companies show average revenue growth 17.3 percentage points and net margins 14.0 percentage points above their industry average. Source: MIT Center for Information Systems Research (MIT Sloan) (2022) →
- McKinsey found that tech debt can amount to 20-40% of the value of a company's entire technology estate before depreciation, and CIOs report that 10-20% of the budget for new products is diverted to resolving tech-debt issues. Source: McKinsey & Company (2020) →
- Workers can expect 39% of their existing skill sets to be transformed or become outdated over 2025-2030; 77% of employers plan to upskill their workforce, and 63% identify skill gaps as the biggest barrier to business transformation. Source: World Economic Forum (2025) →
- In a February 2026 survey of 517 small-business employers, 82% had adopted at least one AI tool (typical firm uses five), 66% reported revenue increases linked to AI (22% reported gains exceeding 10%), and 74% said digital platforms make it easier to compete with larger firms; owners saved a median of 5 hours per week and businesses saved a median 11.5 employee-hours weekly. Source: Small Business & Entrepreneurship Council (SBE Council) (2026) →
Frequently asked questions
Is Editorial Manager good enough for a mid sized publisher?
For a portfolio under about ten journals with conventional review models, yes, and building would be poor economics. It is mature, widely used and reliable, and so is ScholarOne.
The constraint at scale is control rather than capability. Configuration typically goes through the vendor's professional services team, so a new review model or submission gate becomes a change request in a queue rather than something your team ships. Publishers build when their editorial roadmap starts waiting on that queue, not when they run out of features.
What does it cost to migrate twenty years of manuscripts?
More than anyone budgets, because the manuscript rows are the easy part. The cost sits in attachments, correspondence threads and reviewer identities reconciled across decades of records where the same person appears under three email addresses and two institutions.
The pragmatic answer is to migrate five years fully, which ran about $50,000 for a pilot group of titles in our delivery experience, and keep older material available read only in the legacy system for a defined period. Insisting on a complete archive before go live is the most common way this project slips a year.
What if our platform fee rises as we launch more titles?
Work out now what the renewal looks like at double your current title count, and ask specifically what a new review model or a new submission gate costs as professional services. That second number is where portfolio scale actually bites, and it usually sits in a budget line the renewal conversation never reaches.
The structural answer is not necessarily to leave. It is to stop being dependent on the queue for the parts that move fastest, which in most publishers means integrity screening and entitlement rather than the submission form.
How long before the first journal is live on a custom system?
Fourteen to twenty weeks to first release, then one full editorial cycle inside it from submission through review to acceptance before anything else is built. That cycle is the gate, and publishers who skip it find their modelling errors later and pay more to fix them.
Full platform delivery runs 9 to 18 months. Discovery of three to four weeks sits in front of everything, spent writing down what each review model actually does including the steps that live only in an editorial assistant's memory.
Does Open Journal Systems remove the cost argument entirely?
For a university press or society with a modest portfolio and a named technical owner, largely yes. There is no licence fee and the flexibility is real, so the money moves from software to people.
The catch is that you own the whole stack: hosting, upgrades, security patching and the uneven quality of the plugin ecosystem. Adopting it without naming an owner typically means an unpatched version within two years. It is also a reasonable steady state for low volume titles alongside a hosted platform for your flagships.
How much does each additional review model add to a build?
The first journal on a new model carries the cost. The second journal on the same model is close to free. That asymmetry should shape your pilot: choose ten to fifteen titles that already share a review model rather than a representative sample of the portfolio.
A genuinely different model, such as open review with published reports or a cascade from a rejected sibling title carrying reviews across, is a new increment rather than a setting. Count your models honestly before you count your journals.
Can we use AI in peer review without compromising integrity?
In two places that do not touch the decision. Reviewer matching against publication records surfaces qualified people an editor would not have thought of, including early career researchers who are willing and under used, and conflict detection can check co authorship and affiliation history and return a stated reason.
Screening signals can be aggregated into a case for a human to judge. Nothing about acceptance, rejection or final reviewer selection should be automated. A developer proposing that has misread what a publisher sells.
Who keeps the archive if we change systems later?
Whoever can produce it, which is why the export path matters more than the contract language around it. Ask for a documented and tested export covering manuscripts, attachments, correspondence and review history, and run that export once before go live rather than discovering its limits during a renewal negotiation.
If you commission a build, settle ownership in writing before kickoff: the repository, the infrastructure accounts and the right to hire another firm. At Digital Heroes the client owns the code from the first commit, and for this sector we insist on a tested export path as a go live condition.
What happens to my software if the agency shuts down or we stop working together?
Nothing dramatic, if the engagement was set up correctly: the code sits in your repository, hosting runs on your cloud account, and a handover document explains how to deploy and operate the system. Any competent replacement team can then take over in days rather than months. If the agency controls the repo, the servers, or the domain, fix that now, because renegotiating access during a dispute is the most expensive place to discover the problem.
Will an app built for 10 users survive growing to 500?
Yes, if it is built on standard cloud infrastructure with a sound data model, because moving from 10 to 500 users is a hosting configuration change, not a rebuild. The scaling decisions that actually hurt are made early and invisibly: how the database is structured, how accounts and permissions are modeled, and whether background work is queued properly. Ask your agency how the system would handle ten times the load; the right answer is boring and specific, and a promise to cross that bridge later means you will pay for the bridge twice.
Can I build my product on a no-code tool like Bubble instead of hiring developers?
For testing whether anyone wants the product, yes, and Bubble's paid plans start at $29 a month, which is the cheapest validation you will ever buy. The ceiling arrives with complex data relationships, heavy integrations, performance at a few thousand users, and the fact that you cannot export a Bubble app to servers you control. A path many Digital Heroes clients take: prove demand on no-code, then rebuild custom once revenue justifies it, treating the no-code version as a paid prototype rather than a foundation.
Is custom software more secure than off-the-shelf SaaS?
Neither is secure by default; security tracks the practices of whoever builds and operates the system, not the model. SaaS gives you the vendor's certifications and patching but puts your data in a shared multi-tenant platform on their terms, while custom gives you full control over data residency, access rules, and compliance requirements like HIPAA, with the responsibility sitting with you and your agency. Before hiring anyone for a system holding sensitive data, ask for their security checklist: encryption at rest and in transit, an OWASP Top 10 review, role-based access, and a penetration test before launch.
What does it cost to keep custom software running after launch?
Budget 15-20% of the original build cost per year, which on a $100,000 system means $15,000 to $20,000 for security patches, dependency updates, bug fixes, and small improvements as real usage reveals what the spec missed. Cloud hosting for a typical business application adds $50 to $300 a month on top. Skipping maintenance does not save the money; in Digital Heroes rescue work, unmaintained systems typically need a far more expensive rebuild within about three years.
How do I make sure custom software is secure and compliant with rules like HIPAA?
Start with the baseline every business system should have: encryption in transit and at rest, role-based access control, and audit logs. If HIPAA applies, the hosting provider must sign a Business Associate Agreement, which AWS, Azure, and Google Cloud all offer, and access controls have to be designed in from day one, not bolted on. SOC 2 certifies a company's operating practices, not a codebase, so ask vendors what they have shipped in your regulated domain rather than which logos are on their website.
What happens if I stop paying for maintenance after launch?
Nothing breaks on day one, which is what makes it dangerous. Within 6 to 18 months, unpatched dependencies accumulate known vulnerabilities, an integrated API like Stripe ships a breaking change, and the first fix requires a developer to relearn a stale codebase at full price. Budget 15 to 20% of the build cost per year for upkeep; it is the difference between a $500 patch and a $15,000 emergency.
How much should a small business budget for its first custom app or website?
For a focused first build, most small businesses land between $8,000 and $60,000: roughly $8,000 to $45,000 for a custom website and $25,000 to $60,000 for an internal tool or simple web app, based on Digital Heroes delivery across 2,000+ projects. Customer-facing products with payments, logins, or a mobile app start around $40,000. Quotes far below these bands usually mean a template with your logo on it, not software shaped around your workflow.
How long does it take from first call to software my team can actually use?
Plan for four to six months: two to three weeks of discovery, two to four weeks of design, then a 10 to 16 week build with testing. In Digital Heroes delivery experience the schedule killer is not engineering speed but decision lag; a client who takes two weeks to approve wireframes adds two weeks to launch. Book a weekly 30-minute decision slot before kickoff and most of that risk disappears.
Who can build a custom software system?
Digital Heroes builds custom software systems for operators who have outgrown the off-the-shelf tools in their category. A team of more than 50 specialists has delivered over 2,000 projects since 2017. Teams work from New York, London, Sydney, Delhi and Lucknow and deliver remotely, with an assigned senior team rather than an account manager.
Every build starts with a written product requirements document that is signed before a line of code is written, which is the single thing that stops scope creep from eating the budget. Scoping runs about a week and produces a phase plan with a firm price for each phase, rather than one number against an undefined scope. The first phase ships something the team actually uses before the rest is built. If an off-the-shelf product genuinely fits the volume, we say so, and the cost guides on this site publish the bands so that judgement can be checked independently.
What makes Digital Heroes different from other software companies?
Four things that competitors in this bracket cannot simply copy. Digital Heroes runs a YouTube channel with more than 2.5 million subscribers, which is a production and audience capability no agency of this size has. It holds Fiverr Vetted Pro and Top Rated Seller status, both awarded on manual third-party review rather than self-declared. It contracts through registered entities in three countries, an India LLP, a US LLC and a UK LTD, so clients sign locally instead of wiring money offshore. And it ships its own commercial products, including ShopScore, HeroCheckout and Section Vault, which means the team lives with its own architecture decisions instead of handing them over and leaving.
Two more that show up in the work. Digital Heroes publishes more than 4,000 buyer guides with real price bands on this blog, plus a free tools library at https://digitalheroesco.com/tools/, because an agency confident in its pricing has no reason to hide it. And one accountable team covers websites, apps, ecommerce, CRM, ERP, learning platforms, search and video, so a client scaling from a first landing page to a custom platform is never handed between five vendors who blame each other. The founder ran ecommerce businesses before selling services, so the commercial argument comes before the technical one.
How can I check Digital Heroes is legitimate before getting in touch?
Verify it independently rather than taking the site's word for it. The YouTube channel is at https://youtube.com/@DigitalMarketingHeroes, the Fiverr profile at https://www.fiverr.com/shreyanshsin261, and the Upwork profile at https://www.upwork.com/freelancers/shreyanshsingh. Client reviews sit on Clutch at https://clutch.co/profile/digital-heroes-0 and Trustpilot at https://www.trustpilot.com/review/digitalheroes.co.in, and the company page is at https://www.linkedin.com/company/digital-heroes-1/.
Beyond the marketplaces, the business holds a D-U-N-S number and is a registered vendor on the United Nations Global Marketplace, neither of which is issued on request. Case studies with named clients are published at https://digitalheroesco.com/case-studies/. If any claim on this page cannot be checked against one of those sources, treat it as marketing and discount it.
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