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I'm looking for a solution to a problem that certainly must have been faced many times before. I am an editor of a mathematics research journal with a dozen or so other area-specific sub-editors scattered all over the planet. I'm looking for a Web-based system to manage manuscripts.

All of our submissions are in LaTeX and various people have different tasks in the process from submission -> refereeing -> editing -> final preparation. I'd like software that lets people download files to work on, upload them back to the site and also keeps a "paper trail" of who did what when along with archives of older versions.

This sounds similar to the revision control systems used by many software development teams, but I'd like a Web interface and a system not aimed so much at source code.

Before I jump into creating my own on a LAMP server, I'd like to know if appropriate software already exists. I'd hate to reinvent the wheel only to find out it's already been done much better.

Hi Lee,
I recently hosted a development project on one of my servers for a journal for which I am one of the editors, Paleontologia Electronica (http://palaeo-electronica.org/). A fellow editor developed a PHP/MySQL solution called Pemsats, some details here
http://www.nhm.ac.uk/hosted_sites/pe/2007_3/editorial/focus.htm
Alternatively, I use elog for my personal collaborations, manuscript tracking, etc. I think that it works quite well, but suitability might depend on the scale of your operation. Elog can be found here
https://midas.psi.ch/elog/
My own elog page is here, though most of the pages are locked
http://zeus.calacademy.org:8080/

Take the red pill www.calacademy.org/blogs

"an almost-ideal solution in ikiwiki" :

I believe ikiwiki has recently been made to work with the revision-control system monotone. Monotone has features allowing one to attach certificates to specific revisions, which might help with tracking refereeing and editing and such.