Hi @vaibhav_sharma,
Sorry to hear about this situation. You are probably already regretting this situation, and this goes without saying, but I can’t stress enough, the importance of having backups.
Unfortunately, once a journal has been deleted, there is no built-in recovery option unless you have a database or file backup. Much of this You may want to check with your hosting provider to see if they have any automated backups that could be restored.
That said, since you are attempting at rebuilding the journal manually and encountering the “The email address is already in use” error when registering users, here’s what’s happening and some ideas on how to potentially address them:
In OJS, user accounts are stored at the site level, not the journal level. So, if you try to register a user with an email or username that already exists in the system (even if not visible in your new journal), OJS will prevent duplicate registration, This is going to change in later versions of OJS.
Instead of registering users again, you need to assign the existing user accounts to your rebuilt journal and appropriate roles. Go to Users & Roles in your journal’s dashboard, search for the user by email or username, and assign them to the desired role (e.g., Author, Reviewer, Editor (see documentation for more details: (https://docs.pkp.sfu.ca/faq/en/users-roles
Sometimes, users do not appear in the journal’s user list but still exist in the site-wide user database. In this case, you may need site administrator access to reassign them. If you have access to the database, you can check if the user exists in the users table by searching for their email or username.
OJS does not allow direct deletion of user accounts due to data integrity concerns. Instead, you can use the Merge Users feature to merge the problematic account into another (temporary) account, freeing up the email address for reuse4.
The merge tool is available in the dashboard under Users & Roles > Merge User or via the CLI with tools/mergeUsers.php.
As a last resort (and only if you are comfortable with SQL and have a backup), you can manually update or remove user records in the database. This is not recommended unless you are certain of the implications, as it can cause data integrity issues.
I hope this helps.
Roger
PKP Team