Hello @pmangahis ,
I’m aware of the automatic assignment of users to sections. This has been an OJS standard since 2.x, if memory serves (if not by 1.7!!). That’s not the strange behavior I’m referring to.
We have no users assigned to sections (although we also have a few users assigned the section editor role), so the automatic assignment does not happen in our journal. We plan on using this feature when dealing with Thematic Issues.
What I’m dealing with, and it’s annoying as it is strange, is that SOMETIMES, not always, when opening the modal window to assign an editor, instead of viewing the list of Editors, I see the list of participants filtered by Production Designer role already.
I have to select Editors from the pulldown menu and then hit search to view the Editors, which are the 3 ones that are responsible for seeing the submission through the editorial process.
This behavior also happens, again SOMETIMES (and I haven’t found a common denominator as to why this happens!) when I open the modal window again, once I have already assigned one of the editors without the role of Production Designer. The list is filtered by Production Designer again, despite selecting Editors previously. This was worse when there were 2 users with the Production Role assigned.
Now, since there’s only one, I assign that Editor first. Then, there’s no Production Designer left, so Editors are the first listed. However, from time to time, I still need to change the role filter when assigning the first editor to the submission, if the Production Designer is the one presented.
Our editorial team is composed of 3 journal editors and currently, only one has the Production Designer role assigned to him. We had to assign this role to 2 editors for testing purposes, because there were submissions not even Editors had access to at later stages of the editorial process (file download was unavailable, or editing or production stages were blocked, or assigning submission to an issue for publishing, or the publishing button was unavailable!).
I could assign the 3 editors to our main sections, but that would send the submission automatically to review, and there’s a pre-review stage we go through and we don’t want authors to be led to believe the submission is in review, when in fact it isn’t.