asmecher
commented
3 years ago The "Allow user self-registration" field is still used in a few places.
The change described in this issue description, where author self-registration was made implicit, was discussed here: https://github.com/pkp/pkp-lib/issues/2297#issuecomment-376839065
Before the change, when author self-registration was enabled, a user first needed to ensure that they opted into an author role before they were allowed to start a submission. If they didn't, they would receive an error message. For users who forgot to indicate that they were interested in being authors during registration, or for reviewers or readers who later became authors, or users on a multi-journal installation that were active in several journals, it was a confusing roadblock.
After the change, the addition of an author role was made implicit upon beginning a submission -- but only when author self-registration is enabled. If it isn't, then they will still receive an error message.
The user's Profile > Roles form still presents an "Author" checkbox when the role is available for self-registration.
The checkbox is also useful for other roles, like reviewers.
Essentially it gives the Journal Manager an option to have more control over the set of users who are active within a certain role.
I think there were two sources of confusion that are reflected in the forum posts:
- Editors who weren't aware of the change, and
- Users who upgraded to a new version of OJS but had an outdated theme that still presented the obsolete author checkbox on registration.
dkikan
Problem Since the ability to self-register as an Author was removed in OJS 3.x, there has been a lack of documentation or explanation as to how the Author role is granted to registrants, causing confusion when journals enable self-registration for the Author role.
There have been a few forum posts recently where this behavior was mistakenly identified as a bug by those maintaining multijournal installs where users are able to self-register as a Reader or Reviewer, including one resulting in this issue filed by Roger at #6765. Feb 17 forum post: https://forum.pkp.sfu.ca/t/no-option-to-sign-in-as-author/65957 April 14 forum post: https://forum.pkp.sfu.ca/t/ojs-3-2-1-1-no-author-option-when-creating-new-account/67060
In #6765, Alec explains that Readers are automatically granted the Author role for journals with open submissions upon initiating a submission, and references issue #1443 (which is also linked to the relevant issue #3600) but because the option to self-register as an Author remains available, journal managers expect to see "Author" on the list of available roles for self-registration as they might with "Reader", "Reviewer", and other roles with self-registration enabled.
The Author role can be selected for self-registration despite not being available for self-registration:
Incongruency resulting from other roles enabled for self-registration appearing on the registration screen while Author does not (image borrowed from forum). In this case, Reader, Author, and Reviewer all have self-registration enabled, but Author fails to appear due to the way that the Author role is granted automatically once a submission is initiated.:
Describe the solution you'd like If users can no longer self-register as Authors, then the option to enable Author self-registration should be removed. This will hopefully minimize the incongruency experienced by journal managers given the way self-registration works for other roles.
This may also be helped significantly with some in-app information somewhere in the Author role editing screen (or elsewhere?) that explicitly states that the role is automatically granted to any registered user/Reader when they initiate a submission.