Since the Delete button was removed from the list of All Active submissions in an earlier version of OJS, the only way for an editor/journal manager to remove items that are not real submissions-- those that were made in error, often partial duplicates of real submissions, or made during a training exercise, or accidentally Quick Submitted more than once–is to sign in as a journal editor/manager and Decline the submission.
The problem with this solution is that this inflates the number of items Declined by the journal, especially for journals with a large number of submissions.
The use case(s) for some way for Editors/Journal managers to delete/archive submissions without declining them have been noted, sometimes in the context of the ability to see/manage Incomplete submissions:
Workarounds such as logging in as the author and then deleting the submission do not seem to work, since many of these items were deposited by a member of the editorial team and the Delete function is not presented to them in the author workflow.
Is there any way to get rid/Archive these submissions without inflating the journal’s Decline rate?
@NateWr Thank you! I really appreciate your speedy reply. I’m very relieved.
We looked at the decline rate the same day that we deleted the items from the Archive, and the decline rate included the items that we deleted. However, they had been removed from the number of submissions declined by the next day.
That being said, is there any other way in the editorial UI to delete these submissions that are duplicates or those that are incomplete and have been in the Active queue for years? We are dealing with a journal that has over 100 submissions that are either incomplete or duplicated because they were submitted twice. I sympathize with the trouble that other journals were experiencing with the Delete button in the Submissions list, but the process change to having to decline the submission, then delete it from the Archive makes the process to get rid of Faux submissions more cumbersome than it was in earlier versions of OJS. Incomplete submissions are the most cumbersome, because we have to complete the submission, then decline it, then delete it from the Archive. Sigh.
Hi @NateWr . I am having the same issue, with journals who request a possibility to remove faux submissions (often submissions where the revision of a manuscript is uploaded as a new submission). You wrote on Jan 10 that it is possible to delete a submission from the archived submissions list. I do not see this possibility. Was it removed in a later version? We are on OJS version 3.3.0.13.
@alexandraFO I’m glad it helped. Many editors don’t have access to the application managers to do this in the database and have to use the UI to do as much as possible.
Another trick that we’ve used when the submission is in Incomplete status AND the person submitting is known is to sign in as that person and delete the submission from My Queue without ever finishing it:
Open Users & Roles
Search for the person who made the incomplete submission
Click the triangle next to the person’s name and choose Login As
Find the submission in My Queue and click the and then Delete.
and choose Login As
and then Delete.