Unable to finish submission, blank page on Confirmation step

nhan13 · March 4, 2019, 5:05am

confirmation%20stuck

Hello,

we are new users of OJS and have OJS 3.1.1.4 installed. During trial period, we have successfully finished a submission dummy, but now that we are trying to get authors to submit, they are unable to finish their submission. After entering metadata, they are stuck on the Confirmation step with a blank page.

I tried to submit to the same journal but was met with the same blank page on that step. Then, I tried to submit on another journal within the same system and it’s fine and I could finish the submission.

I have tried changing the Submission Metadata settings, unchecking ‘required’ from the Keywords field (I get this from another question in the forum).

jnugent · March 4, 2019, 2:00pm

Hi @nhan13

Blank pages are almost always server side errors. Can you look in your Apache error logs?

Cheers,
Jason

nhan13 · March 5, 2019, 1:48am

Hello, Jason

Thank you for your kind respond.

But, never mind, it was my mistake. We were just in the process of getting Similarity Check account through Turnitin but I have enabled the iThenticate plugin. I disabled the plugin again and it works just fine.

Cheers,

lsteele · August 3, 2021, 7:39am

Hello,
we have just upgraded to OJS V 3.3.0.7 and had no issues initially with new submissions and iThenticate. However, for the last couple of days we had the same scenario and authors could not complete their submissions. In the activity log we received the error below. I disabled the plugin and there was no further issue. Does anyone have further information on this? how should we behave with the plugin?
Thanks

error message:

[02-Aug-2021 10:25:13 UTC] PHP Fatal error: Uncaught Error: Call to undefined method SubmissionFile::getFilePath() in /var/www/vhosts/journals.aboutscience.eu/plugins/generic/plagiarism/PlagiarismPlugin.inc.php:118
Stack trace:
#0 /var/www/vhosts/journals.aboutscience.eu/lib/pkp/classes/plugins/HookRegistry.inc.php(107): PlagiarismPlugin->callback(‘submissionsubmi…’, Array)
#1 /var/www/vhosts/journals.aboutscience.eu/lib/pkp/classes/form/Form.inc.php(171): HookRegistry::call(‘submissionsubmi…’, Array)
#2 /var/www/vhosts/journals.aboutscience.eu/lib/pkp/classes/submission/form/SubmissionSubmitForm.inc.php(64): Form->fetch(Object(Request), NULL, false)
#3 /var/www/vhosts/journals.aboutscience.eu/lib/pkp/pages/submission/PKPSubmissionHandler.inc.php(132): SubmissionSubmitForm->fetch(Object(Request))
#4 /var/www/vhosts/journals.aboutscience.eu/lib/pkp/classes/core/PKPRouter.inc.php(395): PKPSubmissionHandler->step(Array, Object(Request))
#5 /var/www/vhosts/journals.aboutscience.eu/lib/pkp/classes/core/PKPPageRouter.inc.php(246): PKPRouter->_authorizeIn in /var/www/vhosts/journals.aboutscience.eu/plugins/generic/plagiarism/PlagiarismPlugin.inc.php on line 118

jnugent · August 3, 2021, 3:28pm

Hi @lsteele

Line 118 is:

github.com

asmecher/plagiarism/blob/master/PlagiarismPlugin.inc.php#L118

    
      
          			$file = Services::get('file')->get($submissionFile->getData('fileId'));
          			error_log('Name: ' . $submissionFile->getLocalizedData('name'));
          			if (!$ithenticate->submitDocument(
          				$submissionFile->getLocalizedData('name'),
          				$author->getLocalizedGivenName(),
          				$author->getLocalizedFamilyName(),
          				$submissionFile->getLocalizedData('name'),
          				Services::get('file')->fs->read($file->path),
          				$folderId
          			)) {
          				error_log('Could not submit ' . $submissionFile->getFilePath() . ' to iThenticate.');
          			}
          		}
          
          
		return false;
          	}
          }
          
          
/**
           * Low-budget mock class for \bsobbe\ithenticate\Ithenticate -- Replace the
           * constructor above with this class name to log API usage instead of

And that line should only run if the plugin is unable to send anything to iThenticate, since it occurs in the error handling part of the plugin. You could just comment that line out, but I’d probably try to figure out why you can no longer submit to iThenticate. Did you change your password and forget to update your config.inc.php file?

Regards
Jason

lsteele · August 5, 2021, 7:24am

hi, Jason,
thanks for your feedback. I have shared it with iThenticate’s technical staff, along with additional information. I will keep the forum posted on developments.
Regards,
Lucia

David_Alarcon_davidy · September 1, 2021, 2:09am

@nhan13 @lsteele

Hi … i have the same problem … disabling the Ithenticate plugins solves the problem … i would like to know if anyone has any solutions.

lsteele · September 3, 2021, 9:12am

Hello David,
I found that it was a problem with the iThenticate system, rather than with OJS. In fact it started to work again. I set a very low threshold, so I receive notifications for ALL new submissions. As you know, we no longer are notified by OJS of new submissions to journals, which is a pain point.
Hope it works for you.
Lucia

lsteele · September 28, 2021, 9:53am

Hello Everyone, I have just received an author report on the impossibility to complete submission on one of our journals, and disabled (again) the ithenticate plugin. submission was instantaneously completed.
However, before this, I did receive the similarity report, indicating that the files were delivered to crosscheck (@jnugent). It is really odd and I hope someone can help and look into it.
The current scenario is that NO NOTIFICATION is sent to a journal for new submissions, with the exception of a completed similarity check report. If you have to disable the similarity check report, then you are unaware of new submissions. This is rather bad.
Thank you for any suggestions or experiences.

lsteele · October 4, 2021, 1:03pm

Hello PKP technical team. I have been in contact with iThenticate regarding this problem and they investigate it. However, I receive the following message, which I share with you:

Turnitin Support Case 01656068 [ ref:_00D30H14._5005d1awQTp:ref ]
"Our support engineers are not investigating any issues relating to the matter being discussed, they have asked that you reach out to PKP regarding the plugin as we do not manage this.
Sorry I couldn’t be of further assistance on this matter."

I am not sure what is the issue, but it appears that either we can’t complete submissions or we are not aware of new submission… I really hope somehow this issue gets sorted out.
Thanks all,
Lucia