Can mail address be optional in user details in OJS 3.01.0

Hello,

We are entering articles of issues of our journal that are published 45 years ago. Authors did not have E-mails at the time. Can we make E-mail field optional so that we can leave it blank in those cases?

Thanks

Hi @vvucic

I am not 100% sure, but then it could be that there is a mail server configured in/at your server, so stopping/disabling it somehow should stop sending e-mails from within OJS.

Best,
Bozana

When importing backissues with this situtation, we have set the authorā€™s email to be the journalā€™s primary contact. This is obviously a less than ideal situation.

Weā€™re only still just experimenting with OJS 3.x here at UNB, but for 2.x weā€™ve created a simple plugin that just removes the constraint on author email addresses: ojs/plugins/generic/emptyAuthorEmail at master Ā· unb-libraries/ojs Ā· GitHub

I have no idea how portable the code is to 3.x, but if you manage to get something to work, weā€™d love to know.

Cheers,

-Brian

Hello,

We would like to stop it to send e-mails until it will be fully ready for production. Actually, some authors of articles passed away and some articles have been created in times when many people did not use e-mail. We would like to make e-mail address option flexible so those who do not need mail should not have any e-mail address. It is bad solution to put fake addresses so mail servers will always have bounces that can make us to look like spammers. So, making that field (i.e e-mail address) optional is one of solutions. Please advise.

Thanks

It is not idea to stop mails 100%. The idea is to make it flexible so those who do not have mail addresses will not receive it and we do not need to put fake mail addresses and to suffocate server with bounces.
Some articles are written many years ago when there were no e-mails and/or some authors passed away.
We have to find way how to manage those cases.

Thanks

I saw some journals puts there their editorial e-mailā€¦

So your suggestion is to put editorial mail wherever we see it appropriate in those cases?

Hihihihi :slight_smile: I am not sure, just a solution others are usingā€¦ and concerning that I am not sure if and when e-mail will be changed to be optionalā€¦ :slight_smile:

Also, maybe there will be a solution to check if the e-mail exists before sending in the future, but I am not sure about that either ā€“ if and when it would comeā€¦

Bicasā€™s Plugin isnā€™t working on OJS 3.1.1.4, so i found some simple but not beautiful way to solve the topic problem.
a)lib/pkp/templates/common/userDetails.tpl - remove field required from string {fbvElement type=ā€œtextā€ label=ā€œuser.emailā€ id=ā€œemailā€ required=ā€œtrueā€ value=$email) ā€¦}
b)lib/pkp/controllers/grid/users/author/form/AuthorForm.inc.php - comment email check (string: $this->addCheck(new FormValidatorEmail($this, ā€˜emailā€™, ā€˜requiredā€™, ā€˜form.emailRequiredā€™)); )

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