[OJS] Submissions in review highlighting

a020 · July 1, 2015, 12:24pm

Hi there,

I have two journals on an OJS site. One is highlighting submissions as overdue for review when they still have weeks to go until the due date. I also received emails from reviewers saying they had received reminders when the confirmation/due date hadn’t yet passed. I’ve disabled the reminders until I can get this sorted. I’m running OJS 2.4.6 and had made minor changes to the SectionEditorSubmission.php and DAO files in classes, but I have now replaced the files with the original ones supplied in the release. The problem persists. It doesn’t appear to be a problem on the other journal hosted by the site.

Any help/ideas you could give are much appreciated.

Many thanks.

asmecher · July 2, 2015, 4:58pm

Hi @a020,

Note that there are two interrelated reminders – the reminder for when reviewers have failed to confirm their willingness to review a submission, and another when the review due date has lapsed. I wonder if reviewers are confusing these.

Regards,
Alec Smecher
Public Knowledge Project Team

a020 · July 2, 2015, 5:44pm

Hi Alec,

I checked out the emails the reviewers were referring to, and they were the
‘review overdue’ emails. What I can’t work out is why it is only the case
on some submissions.

But still, the fact that some submissions are highlighted as overdue when
they have weeks until the due date is really stumping me - I can’t work out
what it might be. On the flipside, a submission that is overdue doesn’t
have a highlight. It’s like the dating has gone awry somewhere.

asmecher · July 3, 2015, 4:36pm

Hi @a020,

The two issues stem from different code, so let’s tackle them one at a time. For the highlighting issue where a submission is highlighted long before its due date, has the review been confirmed by the reviewer yet? If you’re handy with PHP, you can step through this code to figure out what highlight logic is applying:

github.com

pkp/ojs/blob/ojs-2_4_6-0/classes/submission/sectionEditor/SectionEditorSubmission.inc.php#L482


			SUBMISSION_EDITOR_DECISION_RESUBMIT => 'editor.article.decision.resubmit',
			SUBMISSION_EDITOR_DECISION_DECLINE => 'editor.article.decision.decline'
		);
		return $editorDecisionOptions;
	}

	/**
	 * Get the CSS class for highlighting this submission in a list, based on status.
	 * @return string
	 */
	function getHighlightClass() {
		$signoffDao =& DAORegistry::getDAO('SignoffDAO');
		$overdueSeconds = 60 * 60 * 24 * 14; // Two weeks

		// Submissions that are not still queued (i.e. published) are not highlighted.
		if ($this->getStatus() != STATUS_QUEUED) return null;

		// Awaiting assignment.
		$editAssignments = $this->getEditAssignments();
		if (empty($editAssignments)) return 'highlight';

Regards,
Alec Smecher
Public Knowledge Project Team

a020 · July 6, 2015, 4:27pm

Hi Alec,

They have been confirmed by the reviewer (so are underway), still have time
to go and are showing as overdue. Others that are overdue are not
highlighted.

I checked the code and it is essentially the same as the github version (I
replaced the php in my version of OJS with that one, to be sure, and the
problem persists). Is there something else we might try?

Many thanks for your help.

asmecher · July 7, 2015, 4:16pm

Hi @a020,

Are you handy with PHP? If so, I would suggest using some error_log statements in the logic of the getHighlightClass function to record what’s happening.

The code that determines that an assignment is overdue for a response is this, around line 717:

// Check whether a reviewer is overdue to complete review
if (!$reviewAssignment->getDateCompleted() &&
    $dateConfirmed &&
    !$journal->getSetting('remindForSubmit') &&
    max($dateReminded, $dateConfirmed) + $overdueSeconds < time()
) return 'highlightReviewerCompletionOverdue';

If you can see the highlightReviewerCompletionOverdue class in the generated mark-up, this is what it’s coming from.

Regards,
Alec Smecher
Public Knowledge Project Team