Editor as well as reviewer with trouble reading other reviewers' reviews

Software Support
1

I am the site administrator, the journal editor and one of the reviewers of a fresh OJS 3.0.2 installation. I assigned a paper to two reviewers and also to myself for review, but I can’t see what the other two reviewers wrote. In the Submissions page, the paper is listed in the “my assigned submissions” (like every paper without an editorial decision), and the stage is listed as “review”. When I clik “review”, I see page “Review: [paper name]”, in tab “4. Complete”. If I remove from myself the role of reviewer, when I click “review” in the Submissions page I am redirected to an error page about not having adequate permissions. How to I, as the editor, see what the other reviewers wrote, and make a decision for the paper?
Thanks in advance!

2

Hi @leonardof,

OJS doesn’t currently expect you to be enrolled as both an editor and a reviewer for a submission, because typically reviewers will be blind. Granting an editor role will expose e.g. identifying information about the submitter, so a blind review isn’t possible that way. Is this a test submission, or a situation you expect to see in production?

Regards,
Alec Smecher
Public Knowledge Project Team

3

I agree it is not usual practice for editors to review articles, although I do remember some health journal had (associate?) editors acting as third reviewers, discussing with the two regular reviewers and compiling a single review to be sent to the corresponding author.

For me this was both testing and production. The submission in question was the first one to a “journal” which is actually the proceedings of a conference. I wanted to see for myself the user interface of the reviewers (I only knew that of OJS 2), but I did it with an actual submission.

4

Hi @leonardof,

It’s fairly common for associate editors (“section editors” in typical OJS lingo) to also act as reviewers, but in this case they wouldn’t have both roles on a single submission – just one or the other or more commonly neither.

Regards,
Alec Smecher
Public Knowledge Project Team

5

Yes, indeed.

So, regarding that concrete submission, how do I get to read the reviewers’ reviews and make a decision?

6

Never mind.

One of the reviewers just provided his review, and the editor interface was unlocked for me for that submission. For my immediate needs, case solved.

For the design of OJS 3, it would be better to set some warning or lock when the editor tries to assign to submission for his own review, or maybe think of a way to allow the editor to track the progress of the reviewers even if he/she also reviewed.

7

Hi @leonardof,

Thanks – we’d like to refine this behavior, ideally providing tools to support cases where e.g. a prior reviewer becomes an editor and needs to be able to perform those duties without breaking the blindness of her reviewer work, but haven’t yet been able to prioritize it just yet.

Regards,
Alec Smecher
Public Knowledge Project Team

8

Thank you for your attention, @asmecher.

OJS 3 is great already, and I’m sure it will mature into something even better.