Can prepared emails get the section the submission was sent to?

Hello all,

While using OJS 2.x for managing book reviews (too little time to set up, maintain and manage more than one system…) I came up with the idea of using sections for managing the submissions for a specific book. So, each section is the book’s title.

I wonder if it’s possible to get the section to which the submission was sent, to automate most of the text as much as possible, as we have a previous review of the publication’s project.

In our case, we may publish already written work from outside researchers, but when it’s an internal “job”, we want to get a publication proposal first, to be approved by an Editorial Management Board, so that researchers don’t waste time writing a publication that won’t be published. This hasn’t caught up too much yet, but we hope it will soon.

Hi @ramon,

Have you looked at the Objects for Review plugin that’s included in recent releases of OJS 2.x?

Regards,
Alec Smecher
Public Knowledge Project Team

1 Like

Hello Alec,

This plugin seem to fit more for a standard book review, which is not the intention here. As I understood it, authors will review chapters and then submit them as regular submissions.

What we actually want to do is review a book content as a regular submission, which means the book authors will submit the papers, allowing for editorial process management. The book hasn’t been published yet. I know it’s OMP’s job, but as I said, it’s too much for me to handle right now.

The workflow in my head is the following:

  1. Author(s) submit publication proposal (technical note explaining the objectives, goals, target-audience, general cost overview or list with probable costs, such as translations, image and text copyright, data processing, ISBN costs, etc.

  2. Editorial Management Committee reviews proposal and decides

  3. If approved, authors submit their chapters and reviewers are assigned. In this case, a Review Board is assigned by the Editor, Editorial Board Committee or Organizing Editor, to which all chapters are assigned so that individual chapters and a general book review is done simultaneously.

  4. After approval, content goes to editing process…

If OMP or OJS could handle both journals AND books AND events… that would be awesome…

The only problem would be to move all the content from different systems to a single platform.

Hi @ramon,

Sure. Is your original question just how to include the section name in email templates? If so, you can use {$sectionName}. This applies to any article-related email template.

Regards,
Alec Smecher
Public Knowledge Project Team

Hello @asmecher,

Thanks again!!
That’ll do it…

As I’m creatively using sections as Book Titles, it help automate even more the process…

Hi @asmecher, the {$sectionName} token is no longer working in prepared e-mails. We’re in OJS 3.1.2.4. It used to work, but now is not rendering the appropriate section name in emails sent from the system. Any idea why?
thanks
Christie

Hi @Christie_Hurrell,

What email template are you editing? The {$sectionName} variable won’t be available to all email templates – just the ones that are always used with respect to a specific submission. (That excludes, for example, the NOTIFICATION template, which is used sometimes in regards to a specific submission, and sometimes not.)

Regards,
Alec Smecher
Public Knowledge Project Team

Thanks @asmecher – this is the Review Request template.
Christie

Hi @Christie_Hurrell,

The {$sectionName} variable should work without problems in the REVIEW_REQUEST email template. Is it not being replaced at all, or being replaced with a blank, or something else?

Regards,
Alec Smecher
Public Knowledge Project Team

Hello all,
@Christie_Hurrell,

I believe that if section names are hidden, the template may not get it??
@asmecher may answer this with more propriety, but I believe that may be the case.
Check your section configurations and hide it from the About pages only and see if the {$sectionName} variable appears.

Thanks @asmecher and @ramon for your responses. The variable is not being replaced at all. And the relevant sections are not hidden.
Christie

Hello @Christie_Hurrell ,

Strange… have you checked for any typos?
I usually find I mistype variable names constantly. There may be a space or missing letter, but we read it correctly…

Also, check if you have added the variable to the correct e-mail template.There are multiple REVIEW_REQUEST templates in OJS 2. I’m not sure about OJS 3…

Any news on this? I’m seeing the same: in the SUBMISSION_ACK template, {$sectionName} is just resolving to the empty string. Yet, no sections have been hidden. At least, not that I’m aware of: none of these boxes are ticked:
2020-09-10 08_57_10-Journal Settings

Unless the “hiding” happens at another place I should check?

I’m sure this used to work before, but apparently, it doesn’t any longer in 3.2.0.3?

Best,

Ron

Hi @rvdb,

What version of OJS are you using? (Please include this in your posts.)

Regards,
Alec Smecher
Public Knowledge Project Team

Hi @asmecher,

I thought I had mentioned it, apologies is it wasn’t clear: I’m running OJS-3.2.0.3.

Best,

Ron

Hi @rvdb,

Sorry, I missed that in your above post.

This has already been fixed in Submission::getSectionTitle doesn't return any value · Issue #6102 · pkp/pkp-lib · GitHub for release in OJS 3.2.1-2. For OJS 3.2.1-0/3.2.1-1, you should be able to apply pkp/pkp-lib#6102 Remove broken/little-used section data fetches from … · pkp/ojs@e536fd7 · GitHub – I suspect it could also be applied to 3.2.0-3, but YMMV.

Regards,
Alec Smecher
Public Knowledge Project Team

Hi @asmecher,

After having applied pkp/pkp-lib#6102 Remove broken/little-used section data fetches from … · pkp/ojs@e536fd7 · GitHub, I can confirm that {$sectionName} now resolves correctly in the SUBMISSION_ACK template. Before, it resolved to the empty string, so this seems to be solved.

Yet, in the REVIEW_REQUEST template, this variable isn’t resolved at all: {$sectionName} just comes out literally as {$sectionName} in the email text.

Notice, how this template seems to behave differently: whereas SUBMISSION_ACK previously tried to resolve {$sectionName} (which failed and produced an empty string), in the REVIEW_REQUEST template, no resolution seems to take place at all for the {$sectionName} variable. All other variables in that template ({$reviewerName}, {$submissionTitle}, {$contextName}, …) are resolved correctly, though.

This was tested on my dev instance, running OJS-3.2.0.2.

Best,

Ron

Hi @rvdb,

Could you look over the template closely for typos, e.g. capitalization differences or extra spaces? The same code should be responsible for populating {$sectionName} in both cases.

Regards,
Alec Smecher
Public Knowledge Project Team

Hi @asmecher,

I don’t see any difference. To make sure, I’ve pasted the same text in both templates:

Thank you for submitting the manuscript, “{$submissionTitle}” to the {$sectionName} section of {$contextName}.

…and this is what I get:

…in the SUBMISSION_ACK email:

Thank you for submitting the manuscript, “test” to the review section of TestJournal.

…in the REVIEW_REQUEST email:

Thank you for submitting the manuscript, “test” to the {$sectionName} section of TestJournal.

Best,

Ron

Apologies for bringing up an old conversation, but I am wondering if this issue has been resolved? I am having the same issue.
For our Review_Request email, I type
Thank you for submitting the manuscript, “{$submissionTitle}” to the {$sectionName} section of {$contextName}.

…I get

Thank you for submitting the manuscript, “test” to the {$sectionName} section of TestJournal.

We are currently using OJS 3.2.1.4.