iThenticate plugin issue

Software Support
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1

Hi,

We have activated a paid account for the iThenticate plugin and configured it according to the plugin requirements. However, after the author submitted a new manuscript, no content was synchronized to the iThenticate backend. Can you please advise on the reason for this issue?

Our OJS system version is 3.3.0.7, and the iThenticate plugin version is 1.0.6.1.

Thanks.

Best
Jackie

2

Hi @jicai.he,

When you say iThenticate back end do you mean ithenticate.com? Here you can find the process involved when a submission is sent to iThenticate and how you can check if submissions are in place. Also, double check if you used the correct iThenticate service credentials in config.inc.php.

Best regards,
Josh Noronha

3

Hi Noronha,

Yes, we have pre-registered and activated the paid service on ithenticate.com. Subsequently, we configured the config.inc.php file following the installation and usage guide at GitHub - pkp/plagiarism: Plagiarism checker plugin for OJS 3/OMP plugin. I can confirm that we have followed all the required steps accordingly. However, after a new submission is made on the journal’s backend, ithenticate’s backend does not generate any folders or plagiarism detection reports. We have also checked the log of the OJS system and did not find any relevant warnings or error messages related to the plagiarism plugin. This has left us very puzzled as to where the issue might be originating from.

4

@jnoronha Have you seen my reply messages from the past few days?

5

Hi @jicai.he,

I think my answer went missing for some reason. Please create a test submission, iThenticate should do its job in step four; check iThenticate.com to see if anything was created, if not, run the following query on your database to see if something is missing:

SELECT * FROM versions WHERE product='plagiarism';

If everything is OK, check your PHP error for something like this:

Could not create folder group for context…
Could not create folder for submission ID…
Could not submit…

Best regards,
Josh

6

Hi @jnoronha,

Thank you very much for your response. My colleague and I set up a test environment to troubleshoot the issue we are currently facing. We discovered that on the test site, where we host two journals (let’s say their names are Test1 and Test2), both have the iThenticate plugin installed with identical configurations.

However, we noticed that new submissions from Test1 automatically generate the relevant folders in the iThenticate backend and upload the submitted manuscripts, while Test2 does not generate any content. We confirmed that the configurations for both test journals are identical, yet Test2 behaves as if the plugin is not installed at all, showing no response. We also attempted to configure it with different iThenticate accounts, but there was no change in the outcome.

This has been quite frustrating for us, and we would greatly appreciate your assistance.

Thank you.

Best,
Jackie

7

Dear @jicai.he,

If these two are independent installs, it appears that you have a permissions/ownership issue since iThenticate is not creating the directories in one of the installs; I would compare the permissions and ownership of both installs to see what doesn’t match. Also, check the iThenticate plugin settings in both test journals to make sure it’s configured properly. (Since you set the iThenticate credentials in the config.inc.php file, the credentials fields should be grayed out.

Best regards,
Josh

8

Hi @jnoronha,

After our investigation, we found that in the database, there was a plugin configuration table where the setting_value for Test2 in the ithenticate plugin configuration was not correctly set. After changing it to 1, we tested it again, and the ithenticate plugin is now working properly in Test2.

Thank you very much for your assistance.

Best regards,
Jackie