Some suggestions based on our recent experience with setting up OJS for some journals at Glasgow Uni:
An over-ride button visible to admin and admin-level editors should be available so that that the Abstract field can be left empty. Not all journal formats involve an abstract and at the moment, we have to work around that by putting n/a in the field (tried a space but it doesn’t like that).
An over-ride button visible to admin and admin-level editors so that the Author can be left empty. Again, there are formats, perhaps especially in older publications, where there is no author specified or given as “The Editor(s)” or some such formula. Similarly, it should be possible to over-ride the email field. Especially older articles will involve deceased authors or indeed there may be authors which don’t have an email.
A lookup function for previously used authors, at the moment, you have to enter this information manually every time.
Ummm thank you, I guess. OJS really takes 3 gold stars for hiding stuff, it’s like Pan’s Labyrinth… And not even practical, at least not for us. Right now, we’re working on a mountain of back issues so we haven’t assigned section editors and making abstracts optional requires a section editor…
There should really really be a tooltip, popup or prefill text for stuff like this that tells admins and high level users about features relevant to a section/tool/process, at least the first time. I’ve added dozens of articles already working under the assumption that OJS just forces abstracts. Now I have to fake a section editor so I can make it optional and then go and take all the n/a out that I’ve used so far. What a waste of user time…
PS The path specified doesn’t even exist “There are no section editors yet. Add this role to at least one user via Management > Settings > Users & Roles first.” at least not as a clickable path, “Management” is not a menu item visible anywhere…