Usability guidelines for manuscript management systems

Context Manuscript management systems (MMS) serve as centralized platforms for managing the submission, review, and publication of scholarly articles, thereby streamlining the publishing process. The submission process is crucial for usability analysis, as it represents the initial stage of interaction with users’ profiles. While many researchers emphasize the importance of making these systems more user-friendly, there is a notable lack of studies evaluating the usability of prominent MMS and offering solutions for identified usability issues. Aim This study aims to identify usability issues faced by authors working with three prominent MMS—Editorial Manager, ScholarOne, and Open Journal Systems (OJS)—and measure user satisfaction levels for the evaluated systems and propose usability guidelines to improve system effectiveness and ease of use. Method A multi-case usability study was conducted employing Think-Aloud Protocol (TAP) and System Usability Scale (SUS) questionnaire to capture usability issues and user satisfaction levels. Results All three systems exhibited notable usability issues in areas such as submission, user registration, password recovery, and profile updating—violating several usability heuristics, e.g ., match between system and the real world, help and documentation, visibility of system status. SUS scores were used to quantify user satisfaction—Editorial Manager scored 34.5 (“Awful”), ScholarOne 68.0 (“Okay”), and OJS 65.5 (“Poor”), based on standard SUS interpretation where scores below 70 indicate usability concerns. The average SUS score across all systems was 56, significantly below the industry benchmark of 68, suggesting the need for comprehensive design improvements. Conclusion The findings highlight key usability issues in prominent MMS and propose usability guidelines aimed at improving system usability and overall task efficiency for users. These guidelines enable developers to design more usable MMS.