Both OpenScholar and Drupal CMS empower users to build websites with no code and little setup time. OpenScholar includes additional features and customer support to allow institutions to host sites at scale and meet the research community's needs.

What is Drupal CMS?

Drupal CMS is a new product that launched on January 15, 2025. It allows users to quickly and easily create websites with no code or technical expertise required. It is based on the open-source content management system Drupal, which has been around since 2001. OpenScholar is also based on Drupal.

Drupal powers hundreds of thousands of websites around the world, from enterprise applications to hobbyist blogs. It has a very active development community, but in recent years the effort of building and maintaining a Drupal site has increased, and it has struggled to find new audiences. Drupal CMS, which arose out of the “Starshot” initiative, makes Drupal accessible again to marketers, designers, content strategists, and others who want to create a powerful site without having to rely on web developers.

What is the difference between Drupal CMS and OpenScholar?

In a way, these two platforms do the same thing. They offer users a set of features that allow them to start building a site quickly and easily, without requiring technical knowledge about Drupal. There is a lot of overlap between the features offered, but each system is targeted at different audiences. 

• OpenScholar: Designed for researchers and academic institutions, it offers templates, data structures, and integrations tailored to their needs. It’s a scalable, fully hosted solution that centralizes governance and insights for all institutional web properties.
• Drupal CMS: Built for a general audience, it serves as a foundation for individual sites, requiring users to manage hosting, maintenance, and support.

OpenScholar has a long history. Its features have been developed and refined based on our experience working with tens of thousands of researchers for almost two decades. It includes data structures, site templates, display settings, and integrations that meet the needs of these audiences. Yet it is flexible enough that it can be used for general marketing sites and blogs. It is a fully hosted, scalable solution that enables leadership and marketing teams at owning institutions to support governance and gain insight over all their web properties. 

Drupal CMS is new. Its features have been selected by a team of experts and represent the latest best practices, but they are targeted at a more general audience of marketers and designers. It’s an excellent starting point to create a new Drupal site, which you would then find someone to host, update, and support on an ongoing basis. There are various service providers that do this. You might also have an in-house web team or hire independent contractors.

Under the hood, the two platforms are using many of the same modules. If you try out both, you may recognize the Gin admin theme, Focal Point for images, and the Editoria11y accessibility checker. Like the Drupal CMS initiative leaders, the OpenScholar product team has selected modules, configured settings, and optimized the interface, so that users can get started building an impactful site right away. OpenScholar and Drupal CMS are like siblings: sharing much of the same DNA, but their personalities are shaped by their unique combination of genes and life experiences.

How does Drupal CMS compare to OpenScholar?

If you read the overview of Drupal CMS, you’ll see that it boasts many of the same results as OpenScholar: go to market faster, empower your team with easy-to-use site-building tools, and ensure compliance with security and accessibility standards. What then are the key differences between the two products?

Here is a table summarizing some of the similarities and differences:

Our product team would be happy to talk about any of these points of comparison, or others if you are interested in more information.

Why choose OpenScholar instead of Drupal CMS?

You can build a beautiful website with either publishing platform. So why choose to build with OpenScholar? Let’s elaborate on the differences outlined above. 

1. Centralized governance. Using a centralized platform like OpenScholar, instead of having many standalone Drupal sites, ensures compliance with branding, accessibility, security standards, site naming conventions, and other areas where consistency is required. As an individual site owner, you can relax knowing that you are following the expectations of your institution while maintaining control over the content of your site.
2. Fully managed solution. Hosting and support are included, so you don’t need to worry about hiring someone to keep your server or the Drupal software up-to-date and secure. Our customer success team helps with rolling out the platform to your faculty and staff, and our support team is there to answer day-to-day questions and troubleshoot bug reports. IT staff can focus on other things beyond web support.
3. Connected ecosystem. All the sites at your institution are automatically connected, making it easy to search across them and gather statistics about user activity, content generation, and website views. Organization administrators can make updates on sites or add additional content editors if necessary when staff changes or compliance issues arise.
4. Research impact. Since OpenScholar was started by researchers, for researchers, the features are research-centric. The sites allow you to showcase discoveries and scholarly publications from day one, and satisfy the needs of many faculty and PIs. You’ll be able to gain publicity and attract talent, collaborators, and funding, leading to even more discoveries and innovations.

On top of these major differences, you’ll also have the OpenScholar team continuously improving the platform and introducing new features based on customer feedback. Drupal CMS will receive new features as well, but they won’t apply to existing sites, since Drupal CMS is designed to serve as a starting point.

What is the future of OpenScholar now that Drupal CMS is in the marketplace?

Drupal CMS does not replace OpenScholar. We will continue to offer a flexible, powerful website-building platform tailored to the needs of academic institutions and teaching hospitals. Demands for a scalable solution and specialized research features will not go away. Our team is excited to continue working to meet those demands.

As active participants in the Drupal community, our product and development teams follow innovations in Drupal CMS. We evaluate its features and look for elements that would be useful to our audiences, whether that is new navigation patterns, AI assistants, or more user-friendly field widgets. We also give back to Drupal by participating in issue queues and organizing and speaking at Drupal events.

Website strategy is an ever-changing field. Keeping up-to-date with best practices in so many areas, from visual design and user experience to SEO and accessibility, to security and AI, is quite a challenge. That’s an advantage of hosting your sites with OpenScholar: our team helps owning institutions and individual site owners stay at the forefront of digital communication by proactively improving our platform. And we provide support, training, and guidance to help you elevate your online presence.