Make notification emails for new announcements and issues optional in OJS3.0.2

Hi,

Yes, I noticed that the template is not used a while ago as well: [OJS] Publish Notify email template not used in OJS 3.0.2 · Issue #2406 · pkp/pkp-lib · GitHub

I think that the issue in general will need more work later, but in OJS 3.1 there will be some changes that have been discussed here [OJS] Make notification emails for new announcements and issues optional in OJS3 · Issue #2561 · pkp/pkp-lib · GitHub. Basically when publishing a new issue or adding a new annoucement the editor can now choose whether she wants to send a notification email. I think that most are happy already with this change.

I do agree that the notification for a new issue should be a longer email and maybe use the template you mentioned.

Hi @ajnyga,

In [OJS] Make notification emails for new announcements and issues optional in OJS3 · Issue #2561 · pkp/pkp-lib · GitHub I’ve applied Make sending an announcement notification optional by ajnyga · Pull Request #2804 · pkp/pkp-lib · GitHub and it seems great, no problems until now. And that is why I thought the other issue would apply too in 3.0.2 but looking it closer I wasn’t sure about it.
So, and as you said, the publish_notify notification still isn’t working and that issue was only for the optional sending feature!
3.1 will be a great improvement over some features, but in a nearest future 3.0.2 will resist and I’ll have to manage some of these issues.

Thank you for your help,
Best regards

While we wait to get this issue resolved in the next version, can anyone suggest a temporary workaround to stop sending all notifications. This would be really useful for those trying to migrate old publication data to OJS.

If you are using 3.0.2, then you could go to Settings => Distribution => Access and select the option “OJS will not be used to publish the journal’s contents online.”.

Now when you publish the old issues a notification will not be sent because 3.0.2 includes this change: [OJS] Journals with publishing mode set to "none" should not send notifications when publishing an issue · Issue #2250 · pkp/pkp-lib · GitHub

After you are done with adding the old issues, you can change the setting again.

edit: or you could just do a temprorary change to the core code and remove the code that sends the notifications

Great. Thank you very much for the suggestion.

Just to clarify will this stop notifications like announcements, user sign up etc also? Or this setting will only stop notifications for old issues only? Thanks again.

The trick only stops the notifications for new issues.

The fix that is coming for 3.1 will give you the ability to control both new issue notifications and announcement notifications.

Thanks again for the clarification. Look forward to the 3.1 release.

Hi everyone, I am trying to find the most recent thread that discusses the problem with email notifications automatically being sent out to all users for our journal whenever a manuscript is published despite us having unchecked every box in the Notifications Tab for each user. I’m wondering if this issue has been resolved in any way? I see that there has been considerable talk about it for at least the last year?

Thank you!
Justin

Hi @JPBirdsCaribbean,

I see you’ve also posted this on another thread – please don’t double-post; it clutters the forum.

Regards,
Alec Smecher
Public Knowledge Project Team

Hi PKP team,

we had a very recent case on our recently migrated OJS 3.1.2 platform where notifications for an announcement of a given journal where sent to all journal users. Some users had complained.

Please be aware that as the user profile setting for announcements is implemented currently, it is the wrong way round. By default, notifications are enabled, however they should be disabled (with the possibility to opt-in).

The EU General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), enforced since May 25 2018, requires active opt-in for e-mailings (see e.g. https://litmus.com/blog/5-things-you-must-know-about-email-consent-under-gdpr ). The current implementation is in violation of this principle.

Since the notification_settings table is a key-value table that uses an incremental counter every time a setting is added or removed, I see not a straight-forward way to disable all notifications by default (would require adding a few thousand records).

Please, with the next upgrade

  • redesign the user profile implementation so that it is compliant with GDPR
  • provide a script that allows to set user profiles to their correct default notification settings.