Hello all, @NateWr ,
I’m a bit worried OJS is still dependent on e-mail, as it is becoming more and more of a problem instead of a communications solution, at least from our institution. We haven’t been able to configure our e-mail so that our messages don’t get identified as SPAM, and there’s no documentation on the matter anywhere to try to improve this.
For instance, we are a government institution, always having our systems and servers targeted for hijacking, invasion and misuse as spam machines, which has made our domain fall into most gray and black lists. Removing us from those lists is trying to dry ice, as we fall back anytime sooner than we can notice it.
Another great issue is that OJS is within a specific domain, while most users that receive and send messages are not (reviewers, authors).
Even messages from within our organization (Google Agenda notifications, Google Drive file updates, for example) are being captured as SPAM.
So, instead of being able to send e-mail to all users, I believe a better approach would be to make OJS the sender of the messages, as notifications, embedding the content in the notification. This means that OJS will ALWAYS be the sender of the message, to any recipient(s), in behalf of the original sender.
Would that make sending emails easier or not? Would they be more or less identified as SPAM?
We had to disable 1-click access to reviewers as messages were not even being received. They were blocked somewhere along the way and we have no tools to figure out a way to prevent this.
Also, in the communications area, instead of emails, an OJS ICS file could be used and invites could be made, so that users would get reminders in their agendas as well and editorial teams could have a visual timeframe. A single agenda would suffice.