Journal manager can't download files in Editorial History unless they're a reviewer

Software Support
1

I have an issue in my OJS 3.1.2.1 journal, and I’m not sure if it’s an error or the way things are supposed to work. The journal manager is unable to download any files in the editorial history of submissions that they aren’t a reviewer for. When they click on the download link they get:

  • status: false,
  • content: “You have not been assigned to this submission with a role that is allowed to access this operation.”,
  • elementId: “0”,
  • events: null

Is this the way things should work, or should journal managers have access to all files by default? If this is how it should be, is there a way to give them access to download the files without making them a reviewer of each submission? The journal manager has all of the other user roles as well.

Thanks,
Nick

2

Hi @nwoodward,

I have had similar issue with some articles that have been published before the OJS 2 - 3 upgrade. I guess that your case is the same.
My experience is that the root cause was that the journal manager has been assigned to the articles as an author.
If there is only a few articles causing issues, you can add the journal manager as a participant to them and should work.
If there are many such articles, like in my case, I simply created a new user with the journal manager role and asked the real journal manager to make login as the new user and with that gaining access to all articles.

Regards, Primož

3

Hi @primozs,
Thanks for your response. I think my situation is a little different, because the journal manager isn’t an author, reviewer, or editor of the submission. And the submission came in after we upgraded to 3.1.2.1. What’s really interesting is that even my own Site Administrator user can’t download the file. When I click on the Editorial History and then try to download the file I get the same message. That doesn’t seem like it should ever happen.

Thanks,
Nick

4

For anyone who finds this thread and has the same problem, I noticed that one key difference is in the “Download” link for the file in the Editorial History. If it contains the parameter “stageId” in the URL then the file can be downloaded by the journal manager. It doesn’t matter what the stageId is set to, e.g. 1, 2, 3, etc., but it must be present. If the stageId is missing from the URL then the journal managers see the message, “You have not been assigned to this submission with a role that is allowed to access this operation.” I haven’t determined why that parameter isn’t in every download file link in the Editorial History, but that’s one thing to check.

5

We are exactly experiencing the same problem: not being able to download a file form the Editorial History. And within the URL a stageID is missing too. How can one change the parameters for these URLs? Seems to be a bug in the software?