Multiple e-mail notifications upon submission

We are receiving 2 e-mail notifications when a new submission is made. Why is that?

Is it one for notification of a new submission and the other a notification to assign an editor?

I’ll paste here the contents for both emails:

You have a new notification from Revista Demonstração:

A new article, " Teste Alex," has been submitted.

_Link: http://submission3.scielo.br/index.php/demo/workflow/submission/176155_

SciELO Brasil


You have a new notification from Revista Demonstração:

A new article has been submitted to which an editor needs to be assigned.

_Link: http://submission3.scielo.br/index.php/demo/workflow/submission/176155_

SciELO Brasil

The weird thing is that this section is configured to have an editor automatically assigned to it.

Why am I receiving an e-mail asking me to assign an editor if the system already done so?

We are using OJS 3.0.2

I also noticed that we received a copy of the e-mail notification that was sent to the author.

So, in total, 3 e-mails for 1 new submission.

Hi @alexxxmendonca,

I presume you’re using OJS 3.0.2, is that correct?

I suspect this is because you’re working with a test submission in a way that wouldn’t normally be used during production.

There are two different emails at play:

  • The submission confirmation email: A new article, "...", has been submitted.
  • The assignment notification email: A new article has been submitted to which an editor needs to be assigned.

The first (and there is a variant for non-submitting authors) is sent to the author, with potential BCCs going to the addresses configured in the Submission stage of the Workflow settings form.

The second is sent to all Editors when the submission isn’t automatically assigned to anyone. This is to ensure that it doesn’t drop into a queue without someone being warned. (Depending on your OJS version, the behavior of automatic assignments may vary.)

Regards,
Alec Smecher
Public Knowledge Project Team

Yes we are using OJS 3.0.2.

I used an author-only user, to make sure that I wouldn’t get double-triple e-mails for using an Author/Editor user.

I still received 3 e-mails:

  1. a BCC of the e-mail sent to the author.
  2. “A new article, “…”, has been submitted.”
  3. “A new article has been submitted to which an editor needs to be assigned.”

The weird thing is that I shoudn’t have received 3) since there was an editor assigned to it. The editor was automatically assigned via the Section settings.

Hi @alexxxmendonca,

Hmm, I’m afraid I can’t duplicate this locally. If you’d like to debug this, I’d suggest working with the code that sends the notifications – the execute function in classes/submission/form/SubmissionSubmitStep4Form.inc.php for the SUBMISSION_ACK and SUBMISSION_ACK_NOT_USER email templates, and the execute function in lib/pkp/classes/submission/form/PKPSubmissionSubmitStep4Form.inc.php for the NOTIFICATION_TYPE_EDITOR_ASSIGNMENT_REQUIRE notification, which results in the A new article has been submitted to which an editor needs to be assigned message.

I’d suggest double-checking your user accounts and settings to ensure that there aren’t mixed roles at play here, e.g. one account being used both for (co)authorship, editorial access, etc., as those could cause the same account to receive multiple copies legitimately. (This wouldn’t happen in production where roles are distributed appropriately.)

Regards,
Alec Smecher
Public Knowledge Project Team

Like I said, I made sure to use an author-only user, so there is no way the multiple e-mails could have been sent due to that.

Also, the following point remains without an explanation: why did I receive an e-mail notification asking me to assign an editor when an editor was already assigned? The editor was automatically assigned because of the Section settings for that particular Section.

This can really confuse users.

PS: I am not a programmer and I don’t have access to the code level of our OJS so I will leave the coding instructions aside, but thanks anyway.

Hi @alexxxmendonca,

The receipt of the A new article has been submitted to which an editor needs to be assigned notification has already been resolved in issue #2313 too, I believe, for release in OJS 3.1.

Regards,
Alec Smecher
Public Knowledge Project Team

2 Likes

2 posts were split to a new topic: [OJS 3] Automatically assigning editors