- I would like to be able to search by Author in the Books for Review list
- When our host transitions from 2.x to 3.1, will all the data be ported over? Can I specify that our present entries in Books for Review be imported into OFR in the new version?
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Hi @cspeditr,
- We’re not likely to make changes or feature additions to the Books for Review plugin – or indeed the Objects for Review plugin. At the moment we’re focusing on OJS 3.x.
- We haven’t come to a firm decision on whether to forward-port some of the OJS 2.x plugins to OJS 3.x. At this point the Books for Review plugin is already deprecated in favour of the OJS 2.x Objects for Review plugin, and we haven’t made concrete plans for the latter. We’ll probably look into ways to integrate review-type activities into the existing OJS 3.x workflow rather than adding separate bits and pieces via plugins – these tend to be less well-maintained than first-class workflow tools.
Regards,
Alec Smecher
Public Knowledge Project Team
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Integrating book review offers (and submissions) more properly into the main OJS workflow would be a welcome development. Book reviews are no less integral to the existence of scholarly journals—and, in some ways, more complicated to document/administer—than articles.
2 Likes
Hi,
It may be unusual, but we are interested in OJS primarily to manage a book review workflow. I tested the OFR plugin under OJS 2.4 and it seems to fulfill our business requirements. Do you know if the integration of OFR to OJS 3.x is still planned ? If not, does it make sense to deploy OJS 2.4 to take advantage of this feature ?
Thank you !
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Hi @jdorn,
Have you tried OJS 3.x without any special book reviews? It might be that the workflow there is already sufficient. We don’t have concrete plans for forward-porting the objects for review plugin to OJS 3.x; there are currently 10-20 plugins that are awaiting consideration, and OFR is one of them.
Regards,
Alec Smecher
Public Knowledge Project Team
1 Like
Hi, Alec,
Your reply, although addressed to @jdorn, was sent to me; I’m not sure
whether they were able to see it.
In any case, I’m happy to still be in this loop, as the Books for Review
function, however it is implemented, is extremely important to our journal
(and others hosted at the U of A). I would say that any scholarly journal
worth its salt takes book reviews very seriously.
It’s true that the submission part of the book review is comparable to an
article submission. *However, prior to that happening, the available books
for review listing that is provided online by the BFR and OFR plugins is an
entirely separate workflow that is the key to their online convenience. *
Please, please keep this in mind when assessing potential add-ons to OJS3
Thank you
1 Like
Hi @cspeditr,
Thanks for the feedback. @jdorn commented on a previous thread, which you were active on, thus leading to an email notification to you as well. (Responses sent via email, such as yours, are then posted to the public thread as well.)
Regards,
Alec Smecher
Public Knowledge Project Team
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Hi @asmecher,
Thank you for your help.
The requirements of my users are related to the reception of books, the selection of authors for their review, the shipping of the books, the reception of the reviews. I do not think there’s even a peer review protocol for that kind of works. They have a huge database resulting from their past activity to migrate. So I tried OJS3 as you advised me. I am not an advanced user but I feel that the workflow doesn’t fit as well to their activity as OJS2+OFR did.
If I decide to deploy OJS2 while waiting for a possible port of the plugin under OJS3, can I bet on its backard compatibility ? Or do you dissuade me from making such a choice ?
Thank you
1 Like
Hi @jdorn,
If you’re happy with OJS 2.x and the OFR workflow, then you should be fine to stick with it for now. We don’t have concrete plans to forward-port it yet, either positive or negative, but we do have a number of higher priorities to focus on before we’ll consider starting that work – and community demand will definitely steer us, so your feedback is part of that. If we were to forward-port the workflow, a migration of existing content would most likely be part of that.
Regards,
Alec Smecher
Public Knowledge Project Team
1 Like
Hi @asmecher,
We will deploy OFR with OJS 2.x as we discussed above. But our users have special requirements. Their workflow is quite different - for example, editors offer books to reviewers who accept or decline.
I fear we have to modify the plugin code. We are aware that by “forking” the plugin we will no longer receive updates - if any. Do you think we are on the wrong path?
Regards
1 Like
I hope this reply reaches both jdorn and Alec. I just wanted to say that we
(presently OJS2.4+BFR) would welcome an automated
book-offer-to-potential-reviewer feature.
Also a question: would it make sense to switch now to OFR? I have been
advised that it might be better in terms of migrating our data/history when
our institution upgrades to 3.1.
Best
1 Like
Hi @cspeditr,
Currently neither the Books For Review or the Objects For review plugins are updated to OJS 3.x.
The Books For Review plugin is definitely mothballed, as it was replaced in the OJS 2.x line by the Objects For Review plugin.
The Objects For Review plugin is an open question. We’re not sure whether we intend to update this for OJS 3.x, and to some extent will rely on community feedback.
If you do upgrade to OJS 3.x, content from both of those plugins will remain in the database, i.e. you will not lose any data, but as the plugins themselves will not be present, the information will not be visible anywhere.
Regards,
Alec Smecher
Public Knowledge Project Team
1 Like
Thank you, Alec,
I recall reading among these threads that you were considering
incorporating BFR/OFR functionality into OJS 3 as part of the native set of
features/processes. Is it possible to clarify at this point whether that is
still the case?
Best
1 Like
Hi @cspeditr,
I don’t recall the specific conversation you mention, but broadly speaking, we ended up supporting a few tacked-on workflows in OJS 2.x: the OfR and BfR plugins discussed here, but also e.g. the thesis abstracts plugin. Because these are tacked onto the side of OJS they didn’t have thorough integration into the system and were always supported as second-class-at-best add-ons to the software.
To try to avoid this, we’re interested in looking at the fundamental pieces of those workflows that OJS might more broadly benefit from, with a mind to approaching those (if they’re deemed high enough priority) in a way that augments OJS’s existing workflows rather than introducing a separate and unintegrated workflow.
I haven’t looked specifically at the Objects for Review plugin with this in mind, but off the top of my head, it would mean considering whether generic tools to solicit submissions might allow for solicitations of reviews among other things, or whether a reviewer suggestion tool (which might also be useful for authors of non-review content) might be useful for requesting reviews, or whether certain elements of the standard workflow that aren’t typically used in book reviews (e.g. peer review) can be made unobtrusive for any submission where it’s not needed.
Many of these kinds of decisions have already made it into OJS 3.x – for example, submissions are now not limited to a single file; reviews can take place on multiple files, potentially with a different set give to each reviewer; etc. The end result is a more flexible tool with less bespoke cases coded into it, and in the end, less code to maintain as a bonus.
Regards,
Alec Smecher
Public Knowledge Project Team
1 Like
Hey, Alec, sounds good, thanks for the extra details.
I understand the concept of the books for review being tacked onto the side
of OJS, as you describe it, given that the submitted review ends up being a
“submission” with an “author”. From the perspective of our journal, the
really helpful part of BFR has been the online public accessibility of a
list of available books – doesn’t have to be fancy, but it’s definitely
the best way to keep track of requested/assigned/mailed books for review.
Anyway, I’ve been admonished not to bother you too much with feature
requests.
Best regards
1 Like
Hi @asmecher, Hi @cspeditr ,
We are currently deploying OJS 2.4.8 + OFR. We have modified OFR to support the “book-offer-to-potential-reviewer feature” you mentioned above, with texts in English and French. If some members of the community are interested in this feature we can share this version or submit it via a pull request on Github.
Regards
1 Like
Hey, @jdorn, thanks for this! cc-ing our hosting manager. I understand that
we will be upgrading to OJS 3.x, with (fingers crossed) some kind of
BFR/OFR capability. Hopefully we can use this too.
Best
1 Like
Hi @cspeditr, I can not guarantee that the “book-offer-to-potential-reviewer feature” we develop will be integrated to OJS. (Note that the feature has been added to OFR, not BFR). I would like it to be accepted as a new OFR version. Thus, this functionality might be taken into account if OFR is migrated to OJS 3.x.
I am waiting for a return of @asmecher to know if if it’s worth sharing our code via Github.
Regards
1 Like
Hi, Joachim,
Yes, I definitely understood that.
Books for review are an indispensable part of our journal’s scholarly
activity, and I am treading a fine line between voicing our wishes to OJS
(along with our university’s hosting service) and being a nuisance about it
Thanks again for keeping us informed about your really helpful add-ons.
KM
1 Like
Due to the importance of this issue for our journal, I’d like to reiterate a strong vote in favor of adding OFR functionality to OJS 3. I’m aware this topic has been addressed in other threads (Books for Review, Objects for Review, and OJS 3.X), but felt the need to speak up in this newer thread.
The most important issue here is the ability to prominently display an interactive list of Books Available for Review, through which readers/authors may register requests to review a book. Minor changes to the submission process would not address this aspect, nor would having the capacity to invite authors individually.
I believe this functionality is central to many journals’ public interface, not just those of us who have commented in this forum. This is the main missing functionality that is preventing us from upgrading to OJS 3. As always, thanks for your consideration. We hope you will maintain this feature request as a very high priority.
1 Like