Reporting results of reviews to authors

[RickMath]

Hi Everyone at PKP Support

I have some interrelated questions on handling director decisions and notifying authors of reviews.

First we are using review forms with items including radio and text boxes. We ask reviewers to fill out required items.

When the track director makes a decision the person has in the system a Select Decision set of options that include Accept, Revisions Required and Decline. There is a button to then Record Decision.

When the track director then goes to the notify author icon the email template is next. Clicking on the Import Peer Reviews is supposed to include the reviewer results in the email to the author.

This works fine for accepted papers but does not seem to work for Revisions or Declines. To clarify the reviewer form results are included in the accepted paper email but not in the others.

I would seem to me that the review results would be more valueable to authors of papers requiring revisions and declined papers.

On another note, when the Track Director selects Revisions Required the Decision line shows None and the Select Decision and Record Decision itmes are disabled. Interestingly on an Accepted decision these are enabled.

I hope that somehow we can revise the code to address the above withour having to create a cumbersome workaround for our Track Directors to have to copy and paste the revew form results and attach them to an email to the author.

Please let me know where the code can be modified to accomplish these.

We are runnning OCS 2.1.2

Thanks. Hopefully there is an easy fix for this. Seems like a conditional statement issue.

Rick

[jmacgreg]

Hi Rick,

I can't replicate either of these issues. Have you made any changes to the underlying code particular to either of these options?

Cheers,
James

[RickMath]

James

No the only changes we have made so far to the underlying code in OCS have been to copy track directors on acknowledgement emails for submissions and in the email log for submissions to change the overflow-x to scroll.

That is it. Maybe I am doing somethign wrong but with several test submissions and reviews the import reviews does not seem to work. The only area that I could find that seems to have some reference to the construction of the email using notify author is in ocs/classes/submission/trackDirector/TrackDirectorAction.inc.php

There is one other bug that we fixed and I will have to look it up. As I remember it had nothing to do with this part of the code.

Thanks for you help. Hope this helps. I will try again to replicate the problem. Can you suggest any steps to follow such as notifying the author before recording the decison or something else. Rememvber that part of my original post indicated that if a decision for revisions required was recorded it showed up as not in the decision line. I tested this a conference director and as track director with the same result.

Hope we can find either what I am doing wrong or whatever.

Thanks as always for your help. Hope I am not becoming a pest with all my posts.

Rick

[RickMath]

James

Ths only other change we made was using http://pkp.sfu.ca/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=4692

There was also an error in the original code. I made a post in response to trying the fix indicating that there was a ! left out of the original code.

So this and the last post are the only changes that I have made.

Just wanted you to be updated on your question on the underlying code in OCS 2.1.2

Thanks

Rick

[RickMath]

Hi James

I just tried this again and the same problem occurs. Is it possible that I am using my Director, Track Director and Reviewer roles at the same session? How did you try to test this? Maybe I am doing something wrong. Do I need to set up seperate test acocunts and login seperately?

Thanks for our help.

Rick

[RickMath]

Hi James

This is getting extremely frustrating. I created a new test track director and a new test reviewer. The same thing happens.

We are setup to submit abstracts and papers together. The import reviews button works fine for accepted papers. These are included with the email to the author when I click on Notify Author.

When the reviewer makes a revisions required decision and the track director makes a revisions required decision the import reviews does not work. Also the decision when viewed by the track director is None and the decisions boxes are null.

The system sends the abstract revisons requred to the author and lists the paper to the author as abstract in review and revisons required.

I can't understand why the revisons required and delcine decisions do not result in the same messages and notations as accepted papers.

I will be glad to outline all this in document and also send the accounts in a private email. Maybe I am doing somehthing wrong but I have follwed the same procedure as I do with accepted papers. I will repeat my first observations that authors of revsions rewuired papers and declined papers should have access to the review form.

Please help as we are in the final process of completing reviews and closing out submissons in the next three week.

Maybe I do not understand the system well enough as this is the first year we have used it.

Thanks for your help again.

Rick

[RickMath]

James

I guess I may not understand or have different expectations of OCS 2.1.2 than how it actually works. I am going to back to the beginning with my questions.

Authors (Presenters) submit both an abstract and paper in our version of OCS (ie. I have it set for Abstact and Paper together). These are assigned to reviewers using a custom form. The process works ok with reviewers resonding and filling out the form. These come through to the conference director and track directors OK. Both can view the response form and the decison by the reviewer. This where either I do not understand or the system has a problem. See the next point.

When the Track Directors makes a decision to accept,records the decison and then goes to notify author there is a button to Import Peer Forms. This works fine for Accept decisions. The results of the peer forms are included in the email. I am using the SUBMISSION_PAPER_ACCEPT template. The systems sends this with the copies of the reviews included in the email.

OK here is my question. Why when the Track Director makes a Revisons Required or a Decline decision does the system not do the same as above? Just ot tel you how important this is, two of my track directors are so frustrated after trying to test the other decisions, that they want to go back to our old process. I do not want to do this.

In my previous post I think I also mentioned that the system was not sending the SUBMISSION_PAPER_REVISE and SUBMISSION_PAPER_DECLINE emails. Rather it was sending the SUBMISSION_ABSTRACT_REVISE and SUBMISSION_ABSTRACT_DECLINE emails. I changed the TrackDirectorAction.inc.php to only send the former. This works OK.

Also I you asked in a previous post that I outline any changes made in the underlying code. Other than those I mentioned, I have changed the Locale file to make everything read Paper rather than presentations and/or abstracts.

I have not changed any of the logic in the TrackDirectorAction.inc.php file ohter than the above.

Please advise me on how to accomplish our objectives of including results of review to authors.

The other item that I do not know how to work is a way to include comments by track directors in prepared emails to authors. These seem to be only available if the author logs in and looks at the comments item to the right of Director Decision.

I apologize for making this post so long. I am confused and frustrated because obviously I am doing something wrong.

PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE HELP Rick

[jmacgreg]

Hi Rick,

Thanks for the extra level of detail, and apologies for not getting back earlier. I did manage to replicate this -- it has to do with the "Abstract and Paper together" submission type, and I don't believe has anything to do with the type of form -- and have posted a bug report here: http://pkp.sfu.ca/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=4859. Please CC yourself to that report for future updates.

As a temporary workaround, you may want to investigate using another submission type option. It's not the best workaround, but I'm afraid it might be the only option at the moment.

Cheers,
James

[RickMath]

James

Thanks so much for your reply. I was beginning to think I had or was doing something wrong. I am glad you could replicate the problem. Now I feel I am not nuts.

Before we adopted OCS we would have authors submit papers including abstracts via email to track directors.

I may try the full paper option however that I would guess will not allow us to publish abstracts in OCS. That was our original thought.

As a workaround for the submission that have already taken place, I am going to sugesst to the track directors that they copy and paste the review results into a word document and attach that to the notification email. Clumsy but it has worked in my tests.

Any idea how long the bug may take to get addressed? I exchanged soem email with Kevin and I realize that the support team is busy with the volume of journals and conferences using PKP systems. This is a great testimony to how well the systems work. GO PKP Team!

Thanks again for all your help. I will look forward to the fix. How do I cc myself on the bug? I have an account with bugzilla for the tests of OJS and OCS.

Rick

[jmacgreg]

Hi Rick,

We're working on getting the next release of OCS ready soon, so that bug should be addressed in the next week or two. I believe to CC yourself to the bug you have to log in, and then click the Edit link next to the CC list.

Cheers,
James

[RickMath]

Thanks James

Hopefully this will be resolved in the next version. I know you are busy finalizing.

Since I am a tester for the next version when should I try to see if this is fixed?

I also have another question regarding the default review form that I will post.

Thanks and as always great job by the PKP Team!!

Rick

[jmacgreg]

Hi Rick,

I'm not sure how often the testing install is updated to reflect code changes; your best bet to keep up to date is to keep an eye on the bug for updates, and then check with the testing install to double-check whether the fix works, keeping in mind that we may not have updated that install yet.

Cheers,
James

[RickMath]

Thanks James. I will keep testing and let you know.

Have a great weekend.

Rick

[wbt]

Hi Rick and James,

I am running into the exact same problem. I now am able to give authors feedback after having made the Pending Revisons decision by changing lines like

Code: Select all

if($decision == SUBMISSION_DIRECTOR_DECISION_ACCEPT) 

into

Code: Select all

if($decision == SUBMISSION_DIRECTOR_DECISION_ACCEPT || $decision == SUBMISSION_DIRECTOR_DECISION_PENDING_REVISIONS) 

in classes/submission/trackDirector/TrackDirectorAction.inc.php, classes/submission/presenter/PresenterAction.inc.php, classes/submission/presenter/PresenterSubmission.inc.php, classes/submission/trackDirector/TrackDirectorSubmission.inc, classes/submission/trackDirector/TrackDirectorSubmissionDAO.inc.php. It may be $decision or $latestDecision, depending on the situation. It helps a little bit, but when the Decline decision is taken, all my review reports are gone and the paper is archived. I have CC'd myself to bug 4859 and hope somebody comes up with a fix.

Bye,

Wouter

[RickMath]

Wouter

Thanks. Would you suggest making the change in all of the classes files?

I hope someone can discover how to do this for a decline decision. My feeling is that declined submissions should be allowed the benefit of seeing peer reviews. Our philosophy is that our conference benefits our members by providing feedback to improve their work and hopefully leading to refereed journal papers. Certainly the feedback is an important part of improving one's work.

As soon as I hear back I will make the suggested changes and post the results.

Rick