Context: OJS 3.1.2.4.
Journal A => I created a new role for Editorial Board members (EBM) with :
Permission level => Assistant
Stage assignment => Submission only (no other stages checked)
Role Options => Nothing checked
(EBM need to see the files, interact (discussion; send emails) with authors and editors, but not be involved in the review process whatsoever, nor copyediting/production stages) [and yes I’m also contemplating to maybe use a role based on a modified section editor but I really would want to sort out the assistant based role issue I’m experiencing right now].
I was surprised to see that users given this new (and sole) EBM role, all of them, were automatically set as active participants for all the new articles submitted (and hence appearing in the Participants right hand side menu), even before an editor was assigned. I would have expected an editor to assign a given EBM user to a given submission. I observed the exact same behavior with the OJS 3.x online demo testdrive. I also tested (both locally and demo test drive) by adding a new user as a Funding coordinator (with the default parameters for that role set to permission level = Assistant, and first two stages checked) and this user did also appear as an active participant for new submitted articles… (making the author able to initiate a discussion with these users even before an editor could/would step in). However users that have another assistant-based role for another stage, say copyeditor for stage copyediting, are not automatically assigned to submissions (that, to me, is the expected behavior).
So my 1st question is : Is this intended behavior (i.e. having users (which role is based on “Assistant” as permission level for submission stage) being automatically assign to new submissions)? If so, what is the rationale behind this behavior? I don’t understand why my EBM users are automatically set as participants. I would have expected an editor to assign them manually.
So I continued testing many things, creating and deleting users and roles. At the end I had 2 identical roles : EBM1 and EBM2 (same parameters: “Assistant” as permission level ; submission stage only) with designated users that would have only one of those role and not other. But, once a new submission comes in, EBM2 user is automatically assigned (as is the funding coordinator user) but EBM1 user is not (!). I can’t see what causes that. I looked at the tables underneath (user_groups; they have all the same role_id : 4097 (question #2 would be : how can I get more info regarding role_id in this table (What is role_id of user_groups table)) and question #3 : where else can I look to understand why I get different behavior for the users of those 2 roles. Log files seem ok to me.
Other relevant(?) info: All user’s actions were done by first logging in as admin and than logging as a given user.
Thank you,
Marie-Hélène V.