Creating New Decision Terms

Software Support
1

My conference workflow has four decision terms - Accept Full Paper, Accept Professional Poster, Accept Student Poster and Reject.

by editing the locale xml files I’ve edited the the standard terms (unsure about the implication further down the line however) but I appear to be restricted to only three decisions. How do I add/edit/remove decisions terms for reviewers and track directors?

Thanks

2

Hi @Paul_Coyne,

You can track this down by searching the codebase for the locale keys you’ve already been working with, e.g. in Linux:

 find . -name \*.inc.php -exec grep -l director.paper.decision.accept "{}" ";"

This turns up…

classes/submission/trackDirector/TrackDirectorSubmission.inc.php
plugins/reports/papers/PaperReportPlugin.inc.php

In particular, you’ll need to work with TrackDirectorSubmission.inc.php in the getDirectorDecisionOptions function. (Other modifications will likely be required but that’s a good place to start.)

Regards,
Alec Smecher
Public Knowledge Project Team

3

Thanks,

I’ve made a start, but it’s hard to unpick the dependencies. For example I created 4 new decision terms as ACCEPT is too broad, but it looks as if the static constant SUBMISSION_DIRECTOR_ACCEPT is scattered liberally, upshot is I can see new decision terms on offer, but they’re not being recorded - though I’ve updated the DAO and Action file.

Isn’t there a dashboard setting somewhere allowing one to simply define a family of terms?

Thanks

4

Hi @Paul_Coyne,

Unfortunately director decisions are a little more involved than a vocabulary defined in one place, as they affect various areas of the workflow. Can you describe the behavior you’re experiencing a little more specifically? I’ll see if I can help track down the problem.

Regards,
Alec Smecher
Public Knowledge Project Team

5

Thanks Alec,

Here’s what I did, and the behaviour I now observe:

In the classes/common/Action class file I added these new decision terms

define(‘SUBMISSION_DIRECTOR_DECISION_ORAL’, 1);
define(‘SUBMISSION_DIRECTOR_DECISION_ACCEPT’, 2);
define(‘SUBMISSION_DIRECTOR_DECISION_PENDING_REVISIONS’, 3);
define(‘SUBMISSION_DIRECTOR_DECISION_BUFFER’, 4);
define(‘SUBMISSION_DIRECTOR_DECISION_DECLINE’, 5);

then I modified classes/submission/trackdirector/TrackDirectorSubmission.inc.php at line 145; I changed it to this -

if ($latestDecision[‘decision’] != SUBMISSION_DIRECTOR_DECISION_DECLINE)

And in the same file I modified the function

function &getDirectorDecisionOptions() {
$directorDecisionOptions = array(’’ => ‘common.chooseOne’);
$directorDecisionOptions[SUBMISSION_DIRECTOR_DECISION_ORAL] = ‘director.paper.decision.oralpresentation’;
$directorDecisionOptions[SUBMISSION_DIRECTOR_DECISION_ACCEPT] = ‘director.paper.decision.accept’;
$directorDecisionOptions[SUBMISSION_DIRECTOR_DECISION_PENDING_REVISIONS] = ‘director.paper.decision.pendingRevisions’;
$directorDecisionOptions[SUBMISSION_DIRECTOR_DECISION_PENDING_BUFFER] = ‘director.paper.decision.posterbuffer’;
$directorDecisionOptions[SUBMISSION_DIRECTOR_DECISION_DECLINE] = ‘director.paper.decision.decline’;

	return $directorDecisionOptions;
}

Additionally, in classes/submissions/trackdirector/TrackDirectorAction.inc.php, at line 107 I made this change -

	if($decision == SUBMISSION_DIRECTOR_DECISION_ACCEPT || $decision == SUBMISSION_DIRECTOR_DECISION_ORAL || $decision == SUBMISSION_DIRECTOR_DECISION_PENDING_REVISIONS || $decision == SUBMISSION_DIRECTOR_DECISION_BUFFER) {
		// completeReview will take care of updating the
		// submission with the new decision.
		TrackDirectorAction::completeReview($trackDirectorSubmission);
	} else {
		// Insert the new decision.
		$trackDirectorSubmissionDao->updateTrackDirectorSubmission($trackDirectorSubmission);
	}

What I hoped/expected to happen was that

  1. The Track Director decision selection options would include the new Decision Terms. They do, so that’s OK
  2. When selecting a decision the decision would be recorded as is the case prior to the modifications. Only partially - the Accept As Oral and Accept As Buffer options do not call the recordDecision function and I don’t know why - I’m not sure where to look next so any help is gratefully received!

Best
Paul

6

Hi @Paul_Coyne,

Have you checked the edit_decisions table in the database to see whether the decision is being recorded but perhaps not displayed?

Regards,
Alec Smecher
Public Knowledge Project Team

7

Hi @asmecher,

Can you please elaborate- how to create a new decision called Accept as Poster under abstract review- director decision.

8

Hi @Subrat_Kumar_Sahu,

I see you’ve already posted your question here. Please don’t double-post – it clutters the forum.

Regards,
Alec Smecher
Public Knowledge Project Team