Password restricting articles in OJS 2 - can password restriction be set up to where readers do not need a login?

I am looking at ways to restrict access to recent articles in a journal to just members of a scholarly society. Is there a way to do a generic password restriction on content? So, instead of managing a list of users and users having to juggle additional passwords, is there a way to put a password restriction on an issue/article/file, so that the journal could send out a generic password to the membership or post it on a separate site and not have to manage a membership list in OJS?

I realize there is a way to authenticate by domain, and I will provide that as an option, but that feels like something that might involve more set up right at the beginning.

Hi @randtke,

OJS doesn’t currently have something like that – and I’d warn against using shared usernames/passwords, as your ability to control and audit sharing of those credentials is essentially zero. I presume you do have membership management of some kind, presumably in a different system? Other groups have avoided maintaining these lists in two places via the use of OJS plugins or tools like Shibboleth.

Regards,
Alec Smecher
Public Knowledge Project Team

Yes, there’s membership management for the professional society in a Wordpress site. My role is that I’m with a consortium which provides hosting, and a few steps removed from systems and tech on the other site.

Hi @randtke,

There’s a plugin you could use with OJS 2.x to get OJS to check with an external system in order to grant or reject access; see GitHub - asmecher/subscriptionSSO: Subscription SSO (single-sign-on) plugin for OJS.. This isn’t plug-and-play, however; it’ll probably require a little coding, either on the Wordpress side to get it to provide the kind of exchange OJS expects, or on the OJS side to adapt that plugin to what’s already available in Wordpress.

Regards,
Alec Smecher
Public Knowledge Project Team