Email sender address is wrong - OJS 2.4.6

gunthermaier · April 8, 2015, 3:31pm

Dear colleagues,
since I upgraded to OJS 2.4.6 emails sent from within OJS are all sent from the email account of the editor of the journal, it seems. When one of the section editors is logged in and generates an email, the From of the email is set to the address of the editor (who is not logged in and not involved in the task).
I wonder whether this is a general feature / bug or has to do with our installation. I upgraded the system via a new full installation.

Best
Gunther Maier

asmecher · April 8, 2015, 3:42pm

Hi @gunthermaier,

That’s an intentional change we made to better follow Sender Protection Framework (SPF) email policies. Use the new “email header” setting to add an explanation that the message is being delivered on the journal’s behalf. This is unfortunately necessary to prevent messages from getting flagged as spam, which has been increasingly happening as SPF becomes more entrenched.

Regards,
Alec Smecher
Public Knowledge Project Team

Vivienne_Bachelet · May 12, 2015, 12:12pm

But this is not good at all. Now authors cannot respond to section editors, and traceability may be lost. Is there no way of avoiding this? There are so many other things that should be improved in OJS, but not this!

ctgraham · May 12, 2015, 12:32pm

OJS should be setting the reply-to field in the email to the section editor’s email address. When the author replies, the reply should be automatically directed to the reply-to address, rather than the SPF sender. Is this not happening for you?

nef · August 28, 2015, 1:15pm

Hi Alec
What do you mean by “email header”, is it the subject field?

asmecher · August 28, 2015, 11:19pm

Hi @nef,

The “email header” is a setup field that you can use to give all emails a consistent intro, i.e. explaining that the message is being delivered on behalf of the journal but that the journal may not be responsible for the message’s content.

Regards,
Alec Smecher
Public Knowledge Project Team

philipmach · September 6, 2015, 2:27pm

Mostly, this works but sometimes (for example, reminders to complete reviews), the reviewer emails the editor not the assigned section editor, which presumably means the reply-to: field is not being set. I am using 2.4.5.0 – is this a problem that has been fixed?

ctgraham · September 8, 2015, 1:42pm

This reminder is queued from the Journal’s principal contact for current and recent versions. I checked 2.4.6, 2.4.5, and 2.4.4. This is controlled by:

github.com

pkp/ojs/blob/ojs-stable-2_4_6/classes/tasks/ReviewReminder.inc.php#L48



		$reviewer =& $userDao->getUser($reviewAssignment->getReviewerId());
		if (!isset($reviewer)) return false;

		import('classes.mail.ArticleMailTemplate');

		$reviewerAccessKeysEnabled = $journal->getSetting('reviewerAccessKeysEnabled');

		$email = new ArticleMailTemplate($article, $reviewerAccessKeysEnabled?'REVIEW_REMIND_AUTO_ONECLICK':'REVIEW_REMIND_AUTO', $journal->getPrimaryLocale(), false, $journal, false, true);
		$email->setJournal($journal);
		$email->setReplyTo(null);
		$email->addRecipient($reviewer->getEmail(), $reviewer->getFullName());
		$email->setSubject($email->getSubject($journal->getPrimaryLocale()));
		$email->setBody($email->getBody($journal->getPrimaryLocale()));

		$urlParams = array();
		if ($reviewerAccessKeysEnabled) {
			import('lib.pkp.classes.security.AccessKeyManager');
			$accessKeyManager = new AccessKeyManager();

			// Key lifetime is the typical review period plus four weeks

I don’t know how intentional this is.

Claude_Sabbah · September 15, 2015, 6:41am

Hi,

Is there a way to modify the

in such a way that the Reply-To field is filled with the true email sender ?
Thank you
Claude

nef · November 6, 2015, 12:48pm

Hi Alec
I’m not sure where to find the “email header”. Could you please tell me that cause many of our OJS users are very unhappy with the wrong “from informations”
Apart from that, thank you for an excellent program and an excellent support.
Regards
Niels Erik

asmecher · November 6, 2015, 3:59pm

Hi @nef,

The “email header” setup field should be on Journal Setup, step 1.

We’ve recently added more information about this to the PKP FAQ.

Regards,
Alec Smecher
Public Knowledge Project Team

nef · November 19, 2015, 12:56pm

Hi again Alec
I have now made a setup like you recommend in the PKP FAQ, but still, it is rather strange to receive an email respons from the reviewer with the the pricipal contact email figuring as the sender:

If I “respond directly to this email” the reviewer won’t get it, or?
Regards
Niels Erik

asmecher · November 20, 2015, 6:40pm

Hi @nef,

Articles will have both a “sender” address (always the journal contact), but also a “reply-to”, which in this case should be the reviewer. I don’t see this in the screenshot, but you can check by hitting Reply and checking the address.

Regards,
Alec Smecher
Public Knowledge Project Team

EdwardDavid · November 24, 2015, 3:26pm

Hi @asmecher,
Just wondering the status of this issue? Is the reply-to null as the code indicates or is it suppose to be the reviwer?

Thanks,
Edward

asmecher · November 24, 2015, 8:45pm

Hi @EdwardDavid,

Can you confirm how your system is behaving unexpectedly? Have a look at both the “From” and the “Reply To” addresses.

Regards,
Alec Smecher
Public Knowledge Project Team

griffith · December 14, 2015, 4:44am

The intended behavior causes problems for most of our journals because when the email recipient replies to the sender, the other editors can’t see or track the communication (we typically have a large number of part-time editors). Is there a way to force the reply to address to be the same as the from address (but only for the one journal, not site wide as we have a multi journal install)? The only way I can think to do it is by setting up a generic editor login which all the editors use and therefore all communication goes to the one email address e.g. editor@josi.griffith.edu.au

We would prefer something in the email header like:
from:Journal of Social Inclusion editor@josi.griffith.edu.au
sent by:s.bailey@griffith.edu.au (where this is the OJS account that sent the email)
reply-to:editor@josi.griffith.edu.au

and possibly even a cc to the OJS account that sent the email.

But I don’t see how I can configure this. I have tried adding this

Mail-reply-to: "Journal of Social Inclusion" <josi@griffith.edu.au>

To the email header in Journal setup 1.4 but it just adds text to the email.

asmecher · December 16, 2015, 5:39am

Hi @griffith,

Is this something that changed across an upgrade as with the OP of this thread? The behavior of replying to an email from OJS should be roughly the same as it used to be; before we used “From” addresses corresponding to the sender, and now we use a “From” corresponding to the journal and a “Reply-To” corresponding to the sender. In both cases, hitting “Reply” should result in a message addressed to the sender.

Regards,
Alec Smecher
Public Knowledge Project Team

griffith · December 17, 2015, 11:07pm

Hi Alec,

No sorry, nothing has changed across an upgrade. Though we’ve never filled in the 1.4 journal header section previously so I’m not sure how this is supposed to work and we have just upgraded to 2.4.6. Perhaps I should have found a different thread or started a new thread. We just prefer the reply to go to the from address rather than the sender as all our editors use a shared email inbox.

Cheers,
Suzy

asmecher · December 18, 2015, 12:29am

Hi @griffith,

We’ve spoken about an approach that might solve the problem you describe, but it’s at least a little way further down the road: the reply-to address would be an account that OJS itself managed, so that replying would result in a message getting captured in the editorial history in the system. But could you explain a little further how you’d like things to behave? I’m not sure I follow fully.

Regards,
Alec Smecher
Public Knowledge Project Team

griffith · December 22, 2015, 10:34am

Hi Alec,

We have quite a few journals, and of course none of them want to work the same way. The idea of the reply-to being managed by OJS and captured in the editorial history is exactly what one of our journals has requested. Other journals still do a lot of communication outside OJS because they find the system unweildy. For these journals, some sort of journal level configuration to customise the reply-to address (the same way you can customise the from address in Journal Setup Step 1.2: Principal Contact) so that all mail can be sent from and received by a central email address. Ideally, you would still also be able to identify the individual sender and cc them in the reply.

Hope that makes it clearer. Thanks, Suzy