Granularity on OJS editor event types

[rmichael]

Have you considered breaking up the editor decision events (ARTICLE_LOG_EDITOR_DECISION) such that they reflect the content of the message?

i.e.
"Accepted Submission" might be ARTICLE_LOG_EDITOR_ACCEPT
"Resubmit for Review" might be ARTICLE_LOG_EDITOR_RESUBMIT
etc.

If the HEX values are nicely defined, classes of events could be easily found (i.e. like you've done by prefixing for roles, e.g. author, editor. For example, submission and re-submit events could share some bit in common, in case one cares to quickly grab all 'submission'-related events with a mask.

At the moment, I extract event type ARTICLE_LOG_EDITOR_DECISION, then parse the message, searching for "Accept Submission".

I haven't read all the OJS code thoroughly, perhaps I've misunderstood something. Is there a reason you haven't done this?

[asmecher]

Hi Richard,

We didn't design the decision entries in the log to be machine-readable; the edit_decisions table is the best resource for that. What sort of data are you trying to extract?

Regards,
Alec Smecher
Open Journal Systems Team
---
Don't miss the First International PKP Scholarly Publishing Conference
July 11 - 13, 2007, Vancouver, BC, Canada
http://ocs.sfu.ca/pkp2007/

[rmichael]

I hadn't noticed that table, and I read the technical spec when I was less familiar with OJS.

Is there any additional information that discusses the database fields themselves, i.e. a discussion of one record from each table? I've looked at the Database Design section of the Technical Reference, but it doesn't mention the meaning of the fields themselves.

Specifically, in the edit_decisions table, what does the "decision" column mean? My guess is it's an index into a list of decision types. I can go to the source, of course..

[asmecher]

Hi Richard,

For situations where the technical reference isn't detailed enough, you'll have to look at the code. (Or you're always welcome to ask us here.) As you suspect, the "decision" column of edit_decisions is an index indicating the decision recorded (e.g. Accept, Resubmit, etc). Its value will be one of the SUBMISSION_EDITOR_DECISION_... constants, as defined in classes/submission/common/Action.inc.php:

Code: Select all

/* These constants correspond to editing decision "decision codes". */
define('SUBMISSION_EDITOR_DECISION_ACCEPT', 1);
define('SUBMISSION_EDITOR_DECISION_PENDING_REVISIONS', 2);
define('SUBMISSION_EDITOR_DECISION_RESUBMIT', 3);
define('SUBMISSION_EDITOR_DECISION_DECLINE', 4);

Regards,
Alec Smecher
Open Journal Systems Team
---
Don't miss the First International PKP Scholarly Publishing Conference
July 11 - 13, 2007, Vancouver, BC, Canada
http://ocs.sfu.ca/pkp2007/