Unrealistic Reviewer Invitation Dates

Hi again,
Our journal uses OJS 3.0.2 upgraded from 2.4.8. The Server Environment: Linux OS, PHP version 5.6.29, Apache 2.2, database driver mysql, Database server version 5.6.34.
The config settings are as follows

; Site time zone
; Please refer to lib/pkp/registry/timeZones.xml for a full list of supported
; time zones.
; I.e.:
; <entry key="Europe/Istanbul" name="Istanbul" />
; time_zone="Amsterdam"
time_zone = "Istanbul"


; Short and long date formats
date_format_trunc = "%d-%m"
date_format_short = "%d-%m-%Y"
date_format_long = "%B %e, %Y"
datetime_format_short = "%d-%m-%Y %I:%M %p"
datetime_format_long = "%B %e, %Y - %I:%M %p"
time_format = "%I:%M %p"

When a new submission is sent to the Review stage and a reviewer is assigned to it, we meet unrealistic reviewer invitation dates (as in attached screenshots). We manually correct them, but sometimes the editor send the invitation as is.
The history link under Reviewers title, and Editorial history shows correct dates, but invitation mail, and Reviewer’s task page show those incorrect dates. We assign at least two reviewers for each article, and this situation is valid for both reviewers.




Hope we can find the origin of this issue,
Best Regards,
Ugur Kocak

Hi @drugurkocak,

What do you have in Settings > Workfow > Review under Default Review Deadlines?

Regards,
Alec Smecher
Public Knowledge Project Team

Hi @asmecher,
Weeks allowed to accept or decline a review request, 1
Weeks allowed to complete the review, 4
These are filled as numbers,
Regards,
Ugur Kocak

Hi @drugurkocak,

I suspect this is due to the modification of date formats in config.inc.php. Could you try temporarily restoring e.g. date_format_short to its default ("%Y-%m-%d") to see if that restores proper behavior?

Regards,
Alec Smecher
Public Knowledge Project Team

Yes, of course, I will share the results here.
Regards,
Ugur

Hi @asmecher,
In the recent reviewer invitations, invitation due dates returned to normal.
Thank you for help,
Best regards.
Ugur Kocak

Hi @drugurkocak,

Thanks, that’s helpful. I’ve filed this for developer attention at Changing date formats in config.inc.php can lead to misparsed dates · Issue #2689 · pkp/pkp-lib · GitHub – meanwhile, best to stick with the default date formats.

Regards,
Alec Smecher
Public Knowledge Project Team

Hi @asmecher,
Since I am not a programmer and developer, I am not sure about the origin of this issue, but I feel that it might be related to the php bug related to Turkish locale. We had solved this issue with your suggestions, and the solution was to set the locale to English while using Turkish language.

“Failed Ajax request or invalid JSON returned” errors on Turkish backend

if ($locale == 'tr_TR') setlocale(LC_CTYPE, 'en_US');

So, I will go on using original date-time format, and follow the forum.
Regards,
Ugur Kocak

Hi @drugurkocak,

Thanks, that’s a useful hypothesis. I’ll add a comment to the bug entry.

Regards,
Alec Smecher
Public Knowledge Project Team