This is a discussion I´ve had with Kevin & John, but couldn´t find anything related to it in the forum, so I added a new topic and a little story.
Imagine that I publish an article, as a single author, register in OJS, and everything goes fine.
Two months later, I want to publish another article, but now I have co-authors who are also authors registered in the system. If I do not fill out the co-author´s name the same way it was filled in the system, it will add a new user...
The problem lies in countries where people have many names, like Brazil, Mexico, and so on. I myself have many. My complete name is Ramón Martins Sodoma da Fonseca. Technically I have no middle name, which would be something like Ramón Roberto. The Martins Sodoma da Fonseca part is my last name, which is mother´s maiden name and father´s last name. Someone who doesn´t know me may not know how to fill the form. In the system, Martins Sodoma da Fonseca may be as the last name, but the person filling out the form might break it up and put only da Fonseca, for example.
We are having all kinds of problems with duplicated entries, because there is very little control on user input and there is no search engine within each area to tell the stupid user we have here that that user already exists. Of course, the co-authors should know how they registered, but how can we be sure?? They might not remeber how they filled the form the first time.
We implemented a report with all the users, Kevin sent us a users.php patch, which works great, but still they manage to add the same person over and over and over... It´s not once or twice, it´s every day, with over 10 people, and that´s because we check the database everyday!!!!
Sorry to still bother with this user validation discussion, but it´s important for the integrity of the statistics.
I guess what I want is to warn all developers of the fact that when dealing with public institutions, many times the person responsible for feeding the system is usually someone who cares very little about their job, have very little training and have no conscience of the impact of their mediocrity.
I don´t want to rant about this anymore, hopefully that´s not in all public institutions here or elsewhere, but it happens, and cleaning up the mess is a nightmare..
thanks