Sorry in advance for this long message but we want to alert on problems our editors encounter since the first day we upgrade to OJS 3.5 on March 31st. This message is meant to open discussions on this important but still limited feature in OJS.
Describe the problem you would like to solve
Editors are complaining about the way the invitation to a role feature is working right now. I will try to summarize the problems, basically they are 2-fold:
1) The invitation to role users’ responses are not logged anywhere in OJS.
The new table in the User and Role page lists the name of the users as long as they do not respond to the invitation. Once they do, their name disappears from the list, and no notification is sent to the journal. The only way for the editors to know is what was the user answer it to remember the name of the user and search for it in the user list: if the name is not there, the user has refused, if it is, the user will appear with the new role. This current behavior of the invitation to a role feature leaves the editors blind.
Propositions for improvements:
Invitation to role feature must be improved in the short run and different thing can be done to do so (in order of priority):
- Ensure to log the activity so that the editors can know who has been solicitated and when especially for people who refuses. This will avoid the risk of solicitating the same people. Ex: it can look like the submission’s Activity log.
- The editors must receive a notification when a user responds to an invitation. This could be an email notification to the journal add ress.
- Editors should have the ability to send a reminder for the invitation to a role.
- Editors may have the ability to configure a delay for the invitation to a role, i.e after 3 weeks, if no answer have been received, the invitation date tur ns r ed.
2) The one-click configuration that allow reviewer to access a submission expires after the reviewer click on it for the first time.
Though we understand the security reason behind this expiration, it creates a significant problem with OJS workflow.
For example: I have been invited as reviewer to a submission, I have clicked on the link to respond, accept to review and go to step 3 to see download the article. If I come back before the delay that have been set up to complete my review, there is no way for me to access it, and the editor cannot send me a new link. The only way the editor can do it, is to purposefully change the delay so that he/she can send a reminder email with a new link.
This is only one use-case, there are others: the user clicks on the link but do not respond right away and try to come back a second time; the user responds to the invitation but do not download the ar ticle, etc.
Propositions for improvement
Expiration may remain, but it must be improved:
- Expiration can be triggered by an action rather than a click in the email.
- Editor must have the ability to send a new link if a reviewer asks for it and is not late (no reminder email available). For example, by sending an email to the user, with the ability to select a specific email template containing the URL parameter.
Complementary approach
Another approach would consist not to rely on one click and fully use ORCID in OJS for reviewers. This path requires institutions to become members of ORCID, thus $ $.
Improvements:
· Add ORCID in the invite to a role acceptance workflow.
Thanks!
Pierre Lasou
Université Laval
