OJS emails are marked as spam from Gmail

Software Support
1

Hi,

We have setup an special new university email for the OJS system (like editorial@, from editorial team), but unfortunately I have spotted that Gmail lately (I do not know others) mark the emails as spam and our reviewer requests ended up in smap folder. So reviewers do not know about the request. Is there anything we can do from OJS side?
PS. we are using OJS 2.4.8

2

Hi @vebaev,

If you’re able to find the messages in the spam folder, I’d suggest examining the message source there. Your mail server should add some headers to the message describing how it was spam-checked, and describing any reasons it was flagged.

Regards,
Alec Smecher
Public Knowledge Project Team

3

Here is one of the message headers:

Delivered-To: XXXX@plantgene.eu
Received: by XX.XX.XX.XX with SMTP id r82csp57705oib;
Fri, 27 May 2016 04:19:01 -0700 (PDT)
X-Received: by XX.XX.XX.XX with SMTP id q196mr8322979wme.8.1464347941019;
Fri, 27 May 2016 04:19:01 -0700 (PDT)
Return-Path: XXXX@gmail.com
Received: from XXXXXXX.bg (XXXXXXX.bg. [XX.XX.XX.XX])
by mx.google.com with ESMTPS id ld7si25290666wjb.127.2016.05.27.04.19.00
for XXXX@plantgene.eu
(version=TLS1 cipher=ECDHE-RSA-AES128-SHA bits=128/128);
Fri, 27 May 2016 04:19:00 -0700 (PDT)
Received-SPF: softfail (google.com: domain of transitioning XXXXXX@gmail.com does not designate XX.XX.XX.XX as permitted sender) client-ip=XX.XX.XX.XX;
Authentication-Results: mx.google.com;
spf=softfail (google.com: domain of transitioning XXXX@gmail.com does not designate XX.XX.XX.XX as permitted sender) smtp.mailfrom=XXXX@gmail.com
Received: from XXXXXXXXX.bg (XX.XX.XX.XX) by

4

The problem here lies with your Return-Path. We provide a configuration option that can force the envelope sender to an address that is represented by the SPF record your domain. In your case, your server is sending an email and looking like a Gmail email address when your server’s IP is not in the SPF block for Gmail.

There is a commit in pkp-lib that will be in a later version of OJS that addresses this:

https://github.com/pkp/pkp-lib/commit/7af3bf24a2e24f8e2f4afcde4750d7b16d9b80f7

You can try to roll that into your install now if you like. Alternatively, use a different email address than a gmail.com address, or configure OJS to use SASL or email authentication and send mail that way.

Regards,
Jason

5

My principal contact email (e.g. the system email) is an university email journal_name@uni-plovdiv.bg (and the people are getting messages from journal_name@uni-plovdiv.bg, and I had put only in “Bounce Address” an Gmail address. You mean to put in bounce addres also an university email or? Because nowhere else in the journal settings I have wrote an gmail email besides bounce address so I do not know how our outgoing emails are " looking like a Gmail email address"?
PS
Can I put the same email journal_name@uni-plovdiv.bg in bounce addess and principal contact?

Thanks!!!

6

Hey vebaev,

You probably dont want to use the same address as your bounce address – it will end up getting all of the undeliverable mail from your OJS installation. So, emails that can’t be delivered because of bad addresses or full mailboxes will bounce there. I would recommend creating a no-reply@uni-plovdiv.bg address or something. It doesn’t even have to resolve to anything, because the only part of it that matters is the domain.

Regards,
Jason

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