Security and document compatibility for electronic refereeing

I have recently described [1] a management system, with accompanying software, for use by journal editors in organizing the refereeing of scientific manuscripts prior to publication. For me this system has been very successful, cutting the time from submission to final acceptance of manuscripts from two or three years (under the previous editor) to just a few months. This is fast by the standards of computer science, where referees are meticulous but a bit slow, and almost every paper requires revision and re-refereeing before acceptance.