Scope of Layout Editor role

In OJS 2.4.x, the Layout Editor does not have access to the Issue Galleys, but does have access to the Issue Identification and the Issue DOIs.

This seems backwards to me. I would expect the Layout Editor to be able to modify the Issue Galleys and the Issue Cover, but not the Issue Identification or DOIs. Does that fit the general use case?

What does this look like in OJS 3.x?

Unfortunately I cannot help here, but maybe @asmecher or @stranack can?

Hi @ctgraham,

The issue galley feature was added much later in the OJS 2.x development cycle than the Layout Editor role; in my experience the production/editorial roles (Layout Editor, Copyeditor, Proofreader) are fairly brittle and in many cases journal managers may have opted to perform those workflows in another way (e.g. external correspondence, or Section Editor roles). My suspicion is that Issue Galleys may never have been added to the Layout Editor’s purview, not for any particular reason but because those roles were brittle enough that refining them wasn’t a high priority.

In OJS 3.x, the ROLE_ID_ASSISTANT roles (Layout Editor, Copyeditor, Proofreader, etc.) are managed on a per-submission basis, so they don’t currently have access to issue-related concerns – but that would make a useful feature, and we have a few parallel considerations to work on vis-a-vis role management; see Consider how to add Layout Editor access to Issue Galleys · Issue #2540 · pkp/pkp-lib · GitHub.

Your specific use case would be valuable to capture – perhaps on that bug entry – as I don’t have a clear idea of what level of trust Journal Managers will want to grant to their Layout Editors etc., and I suspect this will depend on whether those are internal (staff) or external (service provider/contract) roles.

Regards,
Alec Smecher
Public Knowledge Project Team