Changing Email Signature

Software Support
1

Hi Everyone, I was wondering if anyone could offer some assistance with changing the email signature on the email templates for OJS. I have looked on other OJS forum threads and have tried the following:

  1. updating the email signature under section 1.4 of journal set up
  2. changed the principal contact under section 1.2 of journal set up
  3. have tried resetting all the prepared email templates

All of these methods still result in all the emails being signed off by me - I’d like to change this so it is just signed off by the journal in general. Just so it is more convenient for the other editors who are sending a lot of emails.

2

Hi @codylo,

What version of OJS are you using?

Regards,
Alec Smecher
Public Knowledge Project Team

3

Hi Alec,

I am currently using OJS version 2.4.8.0! Thanks for your help.

Best,
Cody

4

There are a few moving pieces here:

  1. The prepared email definition closes with some text.
  2. That text probably includes the {$editorialContactSignature}. This signature comes from different places, depending on the function!
  3. If manually sending an email in the “Prepared Emails” interface, the user’s profile “Signature” is included at the end of the prepared email text. I’m unclear how this happens, or if it happens outside of this context.
  4. Finally, the prepared email definition then gets terminated by whatever is specified in Setup 1.4
5

Does that behavior remain the same in OJS 3.0?
I think {$editorialContactSignature} should deliver the same value regardless of who is sending the email.
Sometimes we have our intern send out emails on behalf of the editor, and I certainly don’t want the recipients to have the perception that the emails are coming from an intern.
A separate variable can be used – {$userContactSignature} perhaps? – to denote the logged-in user’s profile.

6

This behavior does continue into OJS 3.x. See, for example, the use of the journal contact in scheduled emails:

vs. the use of the user’s signature in action-initiated emails:

7

Maybe it’s me, but I think that behavior is strange.
Where can I put in a request for the developers?

8

This forum is a good place to vet feature requests like this. There is even a dedicated category just for feature requests. This post will probably get the same general readership in terms of developers, but other users might “me too” something in the “Feature Requests” which might be missed in “Questions”.

I think the general distinction is probably whether or not OJS can reliably determine a “real” user as the sender of the email. If so, this user is used for contact (and sender) information; if not, the journal’s principal contact is used as the sender and signature.

Can you describe what particular emails and editorial actions you are wanting to outsource to your intern staffing?

9

This is our first cycle using OJS, so our experiences are not comprehensive.
But for one, inviting reviewers is a good example. Usually our committee or editors tell interns who they should invite as reviewers. The committee or editors don’t always take it upon themselves to log on and send emails that are prepared anyway.

10

Do you envision the interns acting on behalf of a particular editor, or on behalf of the journal as a entity?

11

For now, on behalf of the journal as entity.
But I don’t think it really matters as long as {$editorialContactSignature} can remain constant, be it a particular editor or the journal as entity.

12

I think allowing the email signature to vary depending on the sender is also a valid use case. For your purposes, standardizing the signatures could be done by editing the email templates for the emails you always want to be “signed” by the journal. This would leave, however, the issue of the sender being different depending on the logged-in user.

It sounds to me like your use case would be most aligned to a shared user account representing the journal itself, which one or more users could impersonate to act on behalf of the journal.