Hello @ctgraham,
The most important roles that really need a calendar are the editorial team members and reviewers especially.
Due to e-mail becoming everyday a hassle instead of a communications solution, we would like OJS not to depend so much on it for that.
The link to the user calendar should be available in the role page, e-mail sent (again, once more dependent on it for something!)
So, for the calendar events and dates:
- reviewer tasks and deadlines, including info on journal, article basic metadata, link to review (just like the e-mail, but as a calendar event/task with the default deadlines). Cannot tell for sure how “alerts” can be set up, if they could be at all.
- For the Editor/section editor (and maybe author, to make the editorial process even more “transparent”?) article basic metadata and timeline. Having timeline controls enables process management indicators, which translate to “quality assurance”, improved indexing, and basically ability to get financial support, higher and better submissions etc.
- For journals who require external tasks such as translations, references and citations normalization, copyediting, layout could benefit of calendar tools, which could also help in production planning, process management and quality/quantity/duration controls/indicators (most of them required for finance, indexing etc.)
I hope this is clear enough… if you require more specific details / use case scenarios, we would be glad to document them.