Archive items listed in random order

Software Support
1

Hello,

one instance of my OJS installations is listing the archive items in random order, and I cannot “force” it to order them by date. I think that is the same problem as the one mentioned in the older forum: http://pkp.sfu.ca/support/forum/viewtopic.php?t=5925&f=2#p54231

but unfortunately, I cannot see the post mentioned by Alec Smecher, and it seems to hold the correct answer, as the journal of the person that had the same problem as I do now, is now working ok.

Thanks for any help!

2

Hi @Eir,

What versionof OJS are you using?

Regards,
Alec Smecher
Public Knowledge Project Team

3

Hi @asmecher thank you for your quick response.

I’m using v. 2.4.6.0, running on

OS: Linux
PHP: 5.5.23-1+deb.sury.org~precise+2
Apache: Apache/2.4.12 (Ubuntu)
DB: mysql 5.5.41-0ubuntu0.12.04.1

Is it possible that the DB is causing the problem?

4

Hi @Eir,

As Editor, go into User Home > Editor > Back Issues. You can use the up/down arrows (or drag/drop) to adjust the issue ordering.

Regards,
Alec Smecher
Public Knowledge Project Team

5

Thank you @asmecher

That will definitely do the job. But, why can’t the system just order the issues by the year by itself, is there anything that is causing the problem?

Best regards,
Eir.

6

Hi @Eir,

Unless a custom ordering has been specified, OJS will order by the issue’s date published – note that if you’ve imported back-issues this won’t necessarily be accurate unless you specify it.

Regards,
Alec Smecher
Public Knowledge Project Team

7

Hi @asmecher,

yes, that is exactly the case, I imported back issues, and in the DB I see that the date_published is NULL, however the year is correctly specified. Won’t the system take that into account?

Thanks,
Eir.

8

Hi @Eir,

No, the issue year is not currently taken into account. The issue publication date, while not strictly required by the import XML DTD, is a pretty important piece of metadata – it’s used in various citation and import/export formats and may also affect your Google Scholar indexing and the like. I’d suggest making sure that these are set properly.

Regards,
Alec Smecher
Public Knowledge Project Team

9

Thank you very much for your help!

You might want to add that notice about the issue publication date in the documentation (especially about the importing xml).

Best regards,
Eir…