There are several cases where the split() function was used in 2.4.8-4:
https://github.com/pkp/ojs/commit/7ca3a84c1f269e101a71804998ad1145c6391ded
https://github.com/pkp/ojs/commit/c3383388650a0f3d845e597d030ef6d6041516c3
You can manually patch these changes, or checkout the branch stable-2_4_8 from git, or look for an upcoming release of 2.4.8-5 or 2.4.9.