[OJS 3.1.2.1] How to determine who receives email

Running OJS 3.1.2.1

Is there any way to manage who receives which emails in the system? At the moment I can go to Users > Current users and edit some details for each registered user. But we cannot turn on/off email notifications for a user. And preferably we would like to mass edit that setting.

And if this is not possible in OJS by default, are there plugins making this possible?

Hi @mattiman,

Could you elaborate on which notifications and for which users you’re trying to modify?

Kind Regards,
Patricia M.
Public Knowledge Project

Hi @pmangahis,

There are registered users in the system which receive notifications of new publications. When people register they have the options in the form (checkboxes):
[ ] Yes, I would like to be notified of new publications and announcements.
[ ] Yes, I would like to be contacted with requests to review submissions to this journal.

But as administrators of the website/system, we cannot view or edit which users get which emails.

best,
Matthijs

Hi @pmangahis,

Do you have any suggestions regarding my question about the email list?

So we would like to know how to manage who gets which emails.

best,
Matthijs

Hi @,

Again would you mind further elaborating on what you’re trying to do? As at this point, I’m not really able to provide any suggestions

As far as I’m aware there’s no batch tool to control who receives those notifications, these are controlled by the users.

Thanks,
Patricia M.

Hi @pmangahis,
I’ve asked my client and her answer is:

When I publish an issue of JZAR many many emails come back – the out of office ones make sense, but indeed there seem to be many spurious emails. I don’t have any I’m afraid – as I delete them as they come in – there are so many my mailbox fills up quickly L
I’m not sure how or if it is possible to go through the addresses we send the issue out to, or how it could/should be edited – and I’m not sure I want that job – but if there was a fix, other than not sending an update to registered users that would be great. In saying that, I’m not sure how someone becomes and registered user and/or manages that account either?

So the problem is that there are thousands of registered users and so thousands of emails being send with each publication. They want to know how to (mass) remove emailaddresses or mass edit mail settings who gets what emails.

Hope it’s clear now?

Thanks again,
Matthijs

Hi @mattiman,

Thanks for providing this information. It’s very helpful in providing a potential solution for the issue your having.

There’s several things that could be done to help with this:

  1. If you’re looking to address the high number of bounce emails - we would suggest setting up an inbox filter to automatically delete these messages that matcha specific email subject.

  2. It sounds as if the journal is dealing with registration spam (invalid or expired emails). It may help to prevent these from coming in the future by ReCaptcha or similar tool. As well as doing a cleanout of bad accounts - which can be done within the journal using the Merge user tool. Dealing with a large volume would require you to use command-line tools.

If you’re interested in learning more about user clean, this may be a good starting resource - The Code4Lib Journal – Making the Move to Open Journal Systems 3: Recommendations for a (mostly) painless upgrade

Finally, we’ve identified this future feature - Send an email to all users with a specific role · Issue #4017 · pkp/pkp-lib · GitHub may be ideal for this situation. This would allow the journal to select only those registered as readers to send the issue published emails.

Kind Regards,
Patricia
Public Knowledge Project