We are using OJS 3.3.0-8. We want to send emails to our 1300 users, but I have 2 questions (after sifting diligently through previous forum threads):
Hi @Lolekbolek,
There is the ability to make a new email template within OJS 3.3 if you go to workflow → template → Emails → Email templates - > add template. Conceivably, you could craft a standardized email there. However, the issue then is getting it sent out to a large number of users, which, as you point out, does run the risk of getting you blacklisted. So, I’m not sure you would want to do this from within OJS. Perhaps exporting the users and sending it via email in smaller batches (e.g. bcc’ing 100 users at a time), might be a better way to go. You could get user exports from OJS - Statistics - Users - and use the export option their, which exports to .csv. You’d then have to wrangle the csv into a usable format.
In the email, itself, you could include a link to the user profile (it would follow the standard OJS URL structure: https://yourjournaladdresshere.com/ojs3/demo/index.php/demojournal/user/profile - that way they could just go straight to their profile (they would be prompted to login first) and make necessary changes there. However, you’re not guaranteed all users would do this.
From there, you could instruct the users to go to “notifications” and then select which notifications they wish to receive, effectively, “unsubscribing.”
Not a perfect solution, but might be worth trying.
And, I wonder if a way to go about this might also be to use the announcement feature? Provided this is something you don’t mind making public, you could make an announcement and then instruct people to unsubscribe that way (using similar instructions that I’ve described above). Although, it’s possible that not all users receive announcements (if they’ve changed their notifications).
Anyways, these are just some thoughts - I don’t think their are any perfect out-of-the-box solutions. This is on PKP’s radar for future feature development (Feature Request: Granular control for email announcements). I know that this is often something that folks in the EU are concerned with, because it may relate to GDPR (See our docs on this here: Configuration Recommendations for GDPR Compliance - GDPR Guidebook for PKP Users, if you’re interested), so other folks who may have had experience with this may wish to weigh in.
Best regards,
Roger
PKP Team
Many thanks, @rcgillis!
I’ll take it to the journal’s Managing Editor and we will follow your advice.