Editorial Reminder email getting sent twice

Software Support
1

Describe the issue or problem

The Editorial Reminder email (An automated email sent to editors with outstanding tasks) is getting sent twice to people. I already do not like that there isn’t an option to turn this email off, but now people are receiving it on the last day of the month and the first day of the month. For example they received it 7/31/2025 and 8/1/2025. Any idea what is causing it to get sent twice?

What application are you using?
3.4.0.5

2

Hi @jhertzberg,

Is this similar to what you’ve reported previously here: How to manage "Outstanding editorial tasks" notification emails? Unexpected behavior - #12 by LAIPENG

Or, a separate issue?

There is an open bug that seems related: Editorial Reminder bug : When section editor is an author · Issue #11047 · pkp/pkp-lib · GitHub - @Vitaliy might be able to speak to this more in depth, and if this might be the cause of htis.

-Roger

3

I believe this is a separate issue. I am the journal manager and not an author or reviewer on any of the submissions. I can understand getting the editorial reminder email once at the beginning of the month, but don’t understand why it’s getting sent at the end and beginning of the month.

4

Hi @jhertzberg,

Thanks for verifying. Without knowing the ins-and-outs of your setup, I can’t say for certain, but here are some things that I might suggest trying:

  1. Automated reminders in OJS are triggered by scheduled tasks, which are typically managed by the server’s cron setup. Sometimes, misconfiguration or improper 'cron job scheduling could result in reminders being sent multiple times. So, you may wish to review your server’s cron job schedule to ensure the scheduled tasks are not set up repetitively and confirm that one scheduled task is running for these reminders.
  1. Check your reminder settings. OJS provides settings under Workflow → Review for automated reminder emails. It could be that deadlies that might span two months (like a due date at the end of one month rolling into the next) can trigger reminders twice. Check the following:
  • Check the number of days after which reminders are sent, and see if there is any overlap due to month-end processing.
  • If tasks are overdue, OJS will keep sending reminders until resolved. Clear out any completed or no-longer-relevant tasks to prevent further notifications.

These are just some ideas to try - I can’t say for certain what might be happening, but these might be worth exploring as potential remedies to your issue.

-Roger

PKP Team

6

Hi @jhertzberg,

did you find a solution for this? I’ve noticed that our OJS (and OMP) does the same thing and has done so for a while. In the months of March, May, July, October, and December, we are getting reminders both at the start and end of the month. The other months each sent out only one reminder, on the first of that month. I thought OJS might have trouble handling 31 day months, but then I’m not sure why January and August wouldn’t be affected.

I’m curious if the first suggestion Roger sent would help, but I wanted to ask for your input before I forward it to our IT department :slight_smile: .

Best,
Pia

7

@piapio I haven’t had any luck figuring out the problem. I just received the emails again on the 31st of October and the 1st of November. I am now also getting 2 of these emails each time (this must be related to my roles in the system?), and one of them tells me there are overdue reviews for manuscripts that have already been accepted.

Our help desk suggested going to your profile, then the notifications tab, and on the bottom, uncheck “enable these notifications” under “weekly email of outstanding tasks.” I just did this, so I’ll find out at the end of the month if this works. But it also doesn’t make sense because that says weekly email and the emails come monthly…

Please let me know if you are able to uncover anything. These emails are very confusing to my editors and don’t like the extra spam.

8

@jhertzberg

I can confirm that unchecking the “Enable these notifications” box in the profile works. I’ve also wondered why it says weekly emails, but I think it is either human error and it should say monthly or both of our scheduled tasks do not work at all like they’re supposed to. I’ve never received any weekly reminders, with or without the box checked.

However, unchecking the box does mean that you won’t receive any of the mails (neither the ones on the 31st nor the ones on the 1st) and I don’t want to make our editors choose between receiving no mails or too many mails.

Our admin account only holds the “Journal manager” role in most journals and we’re not getting double mails, so if you have more roles that could be why you’re getting 2 of each mail. We do have non-public test systems for both OJS and OMP that also send out reminders, so if you have a test OJS set up, check that you aren’t getting reminders from there (if it’s not up to date, that could be the reason why you’re getting mails for overdue reviews that are already published on the real system, but not published on the test system).

I might ask our IT if they can check on the cron setup that Roger mentioned. I feel like this would be a more popular topic in the forum if it happened to a lot of other people as well, so it seems more likely that our server setups are not handling scheduling correctly. Unfortunately this is not exactly a very high priority point for us, so I’m not sure when I can expect a reply.

Please let me know if there are any new results on your end!

(PS: It looks like task scheduling was overhauled with 3.5: https://docs.pkp.sfu.ca/dev/release-notebooks/en/3.5-release-notebook#task-scheduler-changes - we’re on 3.4.0.9. It’s possible the issue would simply go away if we update to 3.5, but that’s not currently an option for us)