Hi @dennmuel
Got the same error here, although my import files validate fine.
Because I have to import more than 300 issue files, I did a “nasty trick” and just temporarily replaced in lib/pkp/classes/services/PKPSubmissionFileService.inc.php all occurences of ‘username’ => (some function call) with ‘username’ => ‘name_of_my_import_user’
Now the import works from the CLI.
@asmecher - Could this not be solved this way?
Catch $request->getUser() or do a check on $request being null.
If $request is not defined, use the username that was specified as an argument for importExport.php . The username needs to be specified anyway for import, otherwise the script returns with a usage error.