Mismatch between submissions and iThenticate

Software Support
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1
  • Using OJS 3.2.1.4
  • My submission queue shows articles 952 and 953 as the latest; iThenticate has 952 and 954 but not 953
  • by editing a URL for another article, I could find article 954 on the journal site yesterday; if I try this again today it’s gone (the place I did this yesterday is still open: I copied the URL to a new browser window and got 404 Not Found

All 3 are different submissions by different authors. Is there any way 954 could disappear from the submission queue (and totally from the system, unless I am missing something) without me (the only editor who can access submissions) doing anything?

Could there be some interaction between the iThenticate plugin and the submission queue where the two garble each other’s state?

Any ideas on how to work out what is going on?

2

Hi @philipmach,

What version of the plugin are you using? Knowing that might help us pinpoint the issue a bit further. I’m not entirely sure what is happening here, but I’m including @asmecher here, who develops/maintains the plugin and might have some idea.

-Roger
PKP team

3

Hi @philipmach and @rcgillis

I don’t want to act as devil’s advocate, but there is a situation like this;

As far as I have read from previous discussions, The plagiarism plugin transfers submission files at fourth step of submission. But the submission has not been completed at that step, and the author can still cancel the submission process, and delete the submission later.
I checked and say that the user can delete his own submission just before pressing “Finish Submission”. But the files have already been sent to iThanticate.
In this way, you can investigate whether such a scenario is happening or not.
Regards,

Update: the Editor might have deleted the Incomplete submission at 4th step too.

4

The plagiarism plugin transfers submission files at fourth step of submission. But the submission has not been completed at that step, and the author can still cancel the submission process, and delete the submission later.
I checked and say that the user can delete his own submission just before pressing “Finish Submission”. But the files have already been sent to iThanticate.

I have found at least one instance where an author at some point withdrew but the paper had already gone to iThenticate. It would be good if this could be prevented somehow.

Is there a reason for not deferring submission to iThenticate until Finish Submission?

I often find the same paper submitted multiple times; the people at iThenticate claim that they do not charge for duplicate submissions within 24 hours if they are exactly the same but this means I have to check carefully that the version submitted on both sites is the same. And sometimes they are not exact duplicates, meaning I get charged for them.

I get why submitting to iThenticate is done immediately and upload is supposed to be complete as it hides the iThenticate latency from the editor who only checks some time after submission. But why not set the system up so that the iThenticate submission only occurs after the author has really, definitely, finally submitted?

Then there is the odd paper that is fully submitted that does not show up on iThenticate; I can manually submit but this means I can’t just log on to iThenticate to see if there is anything new. This may seem lazy but this is what automation is for, not so? And then I do incur the latency for waiting for the report.