Have option to restrict Editor access to Settings

[amandastevens]

Describe the problem you would like to solve
In OJS 3.x the Journal Manager and Editor roles have access to the same parts of the dashboard. This works for some journals but not others where the responsibilities of each role are distinct. Some Journal Managers do not want their Editors to have access to the Settings menus in case they change something they shouldn't. It can also make the interface unnecessarily busy for Editors who do not do any work in Settings.

Describe the solution you'd like
Having some option to limit Editors' access to Submissions, Users & Roles (or at least Users), and Statistics would be ideal. There are a few different ways this could be done, including adding new sets of permissions for roles or making the Editor and Journal Manager roles distinct.

Who is asking for this feature?
This was requested by a Publishing Services client and has been requested multiple times on the PKP Forum.
https://forum.pkp.sfu.ca/t/journal-manager-and-journal-editor/46064
https://forum.pkp.sfu.ca/t/excluding-journal-editors-from-settings/46885

[NateWr]

Maybe I'm not interpreting this correctly, but I think we already support such a setup. Underneath the user-facing list of roles (Journal Manager, Journal Editor, Section Editor, etc) we have a simplified permissions system that works like this:

Role	Permission
Journal Manager	ROLE_ID_MANAGER
Journal Editor	ROLE_ID_MANAGER
Section Editor	ROLE_ID_SUBEDITOR

It should be possible to create an alternate setup that would restrict the editor's access.

Role	Permission
Journal Manager	ROLE_ID_MANAGER
Journal Editor	ROLE_ID_SUBEDITOR
Section Editor	ROLE_ID_SUBEDITOR

Would this cover the scenarios that you describe?

[amandastevens]

If the Journal Editor is given the role_id of subeditor would they still have access to all submissions or only submissions they have been assigned to?

[NateWr]

Ah, I see. No in that case they'd only have access to assigned submissions. This case is something like an assigning editor that has global access to submissions but not to journal configuration.

[amandastevens]

Yes, exactly! And ideally user accounts as well.

[asmecher]

Just a bit of history: Dissolving the distinction between Editor (who works with content) and Manager (who works with settings) that we used to maintain in OJS 2.x was a conscious choice for 3.x -- a lot of people were spending a lot of time clicking between roles when the distinction wasn't relevant to their journals. However, I didn't predict the pushback from the small group of users who do depend on the distinction.

[pmangahis]

We have another hosted client with a number of journals that would be interested in this.

Ideally, the Journal Editor should not have full Journal Manager privileges. The only dashboard items they would have access to is submissions, issues, statistics (similar to OJS 2).

As well as the option to grant access to the user accounts (user tab only) to certain roles (an assistant level) to be able to modify user info but not create new roles types, and site access setting.

[shantanu198713]

Hi @asmecher
I think journal manager and journal editor should be separate. Sometimes the journal editor changes some settings of the journal which he does not want to do and later a problem arises.
So please differentiate between the JM and JE.

[asmecher]

PRs:

• pkp/pkp-lib#5504 Control access to settings by user group #10380
• pkp/pkp-lib#5504 Control access to settings by user group ojs#4431
• pkp/pkp-lib#5504 Control access to settings by user group ops#774
• pkp/pkp-lib#5504 Control access to settings by user group omp#1700

To be resolved:

• Actually prevent access to settings -- this will only hide the menus at the moment.
• Decide how/when to protect users from footgunning themselves by unchecking the setting in their own user group

[asmecher]

@bozana, could you review these PRs for me? Thanks!

[bozana]

@asmecher, I would need to leave it for next week, sorry :-(