Submission form does not advance past step 1 (OJS 3.3.0-19)

Software Support
1

Describe the issue or problem
We are having problems with the submission form for multiple journals on our OJS installation. The submission form gets stuck at the first page and won’t advance past Save and continue.

Steps I took leading up to the issue

  1. Go to Make a new submission
  2. Select section, agree to submission requirements
  3. Submit as journal editor OR author
  4. Click in box for “I agree to have my data collected and stored…”
  5. Click Save and continue
  6. The system just hangs

It is unpredictable when the system will save and continue to the next screen and when it won’t. It does not seem to depend on which journal we are in. The process will work once and then we try it again several minutes later and it does not work or vice versa.

We thought it may be an issue with PHP, so we tried with both 7.4.33 and 8.0.30 (in our test environment).

What application are you using?
OJS 3.3.0-19
Tested with both PHP 7.4.33 and 8.0.30

Additional information

[16-Dec-2024 11:11:14 Europe/Stockholm] PHP Fatal error: Uncaught Error: Call to a member function getId() on null in /var/www/html/ojs/lib/pkp/classes/submission/form/PKPSubmissionSubmitStep1Form.inc.php:372
Stack trace:
#0 /var/www/html/ojs/lib/pkp/pages/submission/PKPSubmissionHandler.inc.php(177): PKPSubmissionSubmitStep1Form->execute()
#1 /var/www/html/ojs/lib/pkp/classes/core/PKPRouter.inc.php(397): PKPSubmissionHandler->saveStep(Array, Object(Request))
#2 /var/www/html/ojs/lib/pkp/classes/core/PKPPageRouter.inc.php(246): PKPRouter->_authorizeInitializeAndCallRequest(Array, Object(Request), Array, false)
#3 /var/www/html/ojs/lib/pkp/classes/core/Dispatcher.inc.php(144): PKPPageRouter->route(Object(Request))
#4 /var/www/html/ojs/lib/pkp/classes/core/PKPApplication.inc.php(360): Dispatcher->dispatch(Object(Request))
#5 /var/www/html/ojs/index.php(68): PKPApplication->execute()
#6 {main}
thrown in /var/www/html/ojs/lib/pkp/classes/submission/form/PKPSubmissionSubmitStep1Form.inc.php on line 372


[16-Dec-2024 12:12:08 Europe/Stockholm] PHP Fatal error: Uncaught Error: Call to a member function getId() on null in /var/www/html/ojs/lib/pkp/classes/submission/form/PKPSubmissionSubmitStep1Form.inc.php:372
Stack trace:
#0 /var/www/html/ojs/lib/pkp/pages/submission/PKPSubmissionHandler.inc.php(177): PKPSubmissionSubmitStep1Form->execute()
#1 /var/www/html/ojs/lib/pkp/classes/core/PKPRouter.inc.php(397): PKPSubmissionHandler->saveStep(Array, Object(Request))
#2 /var/www/html/ojs/lib/pkp/classes/core/PKPPageRouter.inc.php(246): PKPRouter->_authorizeInitializeAndCallRequest(Array, Object(Request), Array, false)
#3 /var/www/html/ojs/lib/pkp/classes/core/Dispatcher.inc.php(144): PKPPageRouter->route(Object(Request))
#4 /var/www/html/ojs/lib/pkp/classes/core/PKPApplication.inc.php(360): Dispatcher->dispatch(Object(Request))
#5 /var/www/html/ojs/index.php(68): PKPApplication->execute()
#6 {main}
thrown in /var/www/html/ojs/lib/pkp/classes/submission/form/PKPSubmissionSubmitStep1Form.inc.php on line 372