Articles missing from past journal issues

[HDavid]

Currently using: OJS 3.0.2.0

Hello. I’m getting in touch about missing articles from past issues of the journal I work for. These articles are not visible in the OJS ‘back issues’ section or anywhere else I can see in OJS.

The articles were posted under sections which are no longer used by the journal and which are no longer visible in the list of sections. Is it possible that these sections could have been lost or deleted, together with the associated articles?

I realise that it shouldn’t be possible to delete a section while it still has articles in it, but clearly something has resulted in the loss of these section categories together with the articles in them.

I’d be very grateful for any suggestions on how to resolve this. The priority is recovering the lost / deleted articles - is there any method for doing this within OJS?

There still seems to be some trace of the missing articles within OJS - in ‘back issues’, these articles are not visible when I click on the ‘edit’ option for a given issue. However, the number of items in the issue reflects the full number of articles, including the missing articles. See screenshot below:

This shows 20 items in the journal issue, which is correct. However, when I go to edit the issue, there are only 16 items - one section with 4 items in it is missing. This section is also missing from the ‘sections’ tab under ‘journal settings’.

I’d be very grateful for any help resolving this.

[rcgillis]

Hi @HDavid,

Please note that the version of OJS that you’re using is no longer supported by PKP. I recommend that you upgrade to the newest version of OJS.

Upgrading instructions are available in the PKP Administrator’s Guide. And information about the latest version of OJS can be found on the PKP Website

In later versions of OJS (3.3+), there is an option for making a section de-activated, so that articles that were previously under that section remain, but new submissions cannot be made to the section if it is discontinued.

That said, articles do have to be associated with sections - and its possible that these articles have become orphaned from their sections and that is why this is occurring. You may want to have a look at this post where they were reconciled using an SQL query: By mistake I deleted the sections and now all the article have been deleted - #4 by varshilmehta

You may have to identify all of the articles without section and ensure that they are then re-associated with the appropriate section.

-Roger
PKP Team

[HDavid]

Hi @rcgillis ,

Thank you so much for this response - really helpful.

We’re aware that the version of OJS we’re using is no longer supported by PKP - thank you for the links to upgrading instructions and for offering a potential solution despite this.

Definitely useful to know that articles having been orphaned from their sections is a possible cause, and thank you for the link to the earlier thread. We’ll carry on looking into options! Thanks again.