Drupal 6.x Upgrade for eJournal Module

Working in progress, where somewhat near a "release", you can see it in branch DRUPAL-6--1 at cvs.

CVS Messages

I too am looking forward to this fully functioning module in Drupal.

I have used the OJS (Open Journal System) and OCS (Open Conference System) and Harvester (to a MUCH lesser degree) from the PKP (Public Knowledge Project) extensively. I would be very interested in comparing them and providing feedback.

Looking forward to extensively testing this module for Drupal 6.x as soon as there is a development snapshot out.

Best Regards!
-ROR

Okay, looking at the CVS messages I found the last commit on April 24, 2008 for 6--1 by nobios,

following it I got to the Diff of /contributions page.

So I believe that essentially I can edit the source file (settings.php?) to implement the highlighted differences? Is that all?

Best Regards!
-ROR

Everson (the other devoloper) has done some changes, not commited yet
Are you willing to help us port the ejournal? It would be good to coordinate our efforts

Best,

I am not sure whether this is a question of "willing" or "not willing". I do not know if I am able to help you.

I really have no experience with PHP. I have done some programming before, but it was limited to R and Matlab.

If there is something that I can do you should definitely let me know. I'll be more than happy to put in whatever I can.

Best Regards,
-ROR

How would I be able to access the DRUPAL-6--1 revisions?

Is it just applying the Diff of /contributions? Or do you think I should wait with the testing until the new revisions you mentioned (by Everson) are posted?

Regards,
-ROR

subscribing. ready to test as well - don't know how to use CVS and have spent about an hour trying to figure it out.

ray murphy

Hi,
you dont need to apply any diff, just checkout the cvs - but please wait with testing for now.

Alright, definitely. I will wait with testing until whenever you feel that it is ready.

Just out of curiosity, how much is this similar to OJS? Would you say its like 75% of the way or what?

Good luck,

Let me know whenever you need something tested.

Regards,
-ROR

you would use OJS because it has peer-review workflow, ejournal developers have never find enough time to implement that sort of thing (but one month of development would suffice, I am sure - I never found one month though). So, if you speak about the potential, Drupal is better than OJS. If you speak about reality, ejournal&drupal_modules have 75% of OJS - but don't have *the most important 25%*, the peer review and the e-mailing system (everything else you can find in Drupal/ejournal)

Hey. Thanks for the response.

you would use OJS because it has peer-review workflow

I wasn't actually asking which one to use. I was just curious how much of the way it was there. I am thinking about moving some of the "journals" that I have to the Drupal E-journal because OJS is overkill for many of them. Many are just repositories of documents that need academic styling (some journal functionality, etc.). This would be perfect for them.

ejournal developers have never find enough time to implement that sort of thing (but one month of development would suffice, I am sure - I never found one month though).

Anyhow - I have been cramming and practicing some PHP, JS, etc. Maybe in a few months I will be good enough to try to help out. I certainly hope so.

How many developer are there working on this module? The developer list shows two of you (romca, and nobios) but you also mentioned Everson.

Looking forward to this module. Let me know if I can be of help.

Best Regards,
-ROR

A module like this could bring a lotta traffic to Drupal. That's pretty cool. I don't know why it is not very popular. I guess you don't have that many people wantin' to use journals.

Just checkin' back in.

I am curious as to when you expect to have a testable release? Really can't wait to start using it. I am very excited!

@_@

cheers,
-ray murphy

Just checkin' back in.

I am curious as to when you expect to have a testable release? Really can't wait to start using it. I am very excited!

@_@

cheers,
-ray murphy

I too would really love to know if there is an estimated release time. To move my stuff from OJS to Drupal 6 would be REALLY cool.

Thanks in advance!

Best Regards,
-ROR

Everson has told me to be putting the latest changes this week to the CVS. Thanks for you interest, i should post an update here when it's ready

Great! Can't wait!

Will be ready to test it as soon as it is released.

Dang. This has got me in suspense! Waiting on the edge of my seat for this release!

I hope that you are going to post it here so that I am notified immediately!

ray

Don't expect too much yet... We gonna make a preview release, it's not yet ready for prime time.

But since it's grabing more attention now, I will try to focus more work in it.

ps: I'm Everson. :)

Hey Everson!

Sounds great. I'll be ready to start testing it.

-ROR

Don't expect too much yet... We gonna make a preview release, it's not yet ready for prime time.

lol. Dont say that. It's not like it is being rebuilt from scratch. Just being ported from 5.x to. 6.x . Thanks a lot for this!

Waiting frantically!

Cheers everyone!
-Ray Murphy

Any updates on this?

Cheers,
-ROR

hi guys,
thanks for your questions, i understand that you won't be waiting for us forever (but the pressure works ;-)).

i just checked-out the drupal-6 version from the cvs. fixed one issue with the menu. now ejournal displays, yet when i tried to add a journal, an error appeared - i hope to have some time tomorrow to look closer at it

--romca

My bad, I'm sorry for the inconvenience... My son got sick and I had to spend my whole weekend taking care of him, his a little better now but still not 100%.

Anyway, I updated some code today, nothing that make it working. I writed down some of the issues in the CVS message.

The way it is now is still not usefull. We can't insert issues in journal and I didn't had the time to review this form yet. But I plan to do some more coding during the night. Should expect something by the morning.

i understand that you won't be waiting for us forever

Hey. I was not trying to implicate that "we will not be waiting forever". To the contrary - I won't be doing anything official with it for months. I just wanted to start testing it, playing with it, getting used to it, finding bugs, etc. just so that Drupal can have a strong, integrated alternative to OJS.

I was just curious as to updates. I am pretty excited about this module. Maybe and ETA or something.

But take your time, no pressure - even if it works 8-) .

Cheers man!
-ROR

the core module now works - well, at least the add,edit,delete journal/issue (volume should work too)
i will have to move to other tasks, so for today it is all from me

note: i haven't made the D6 pre-release yet, you can get the code from the CVS

Hi Everson!

I hope your son will be ok. Don't worry with the ejournal too much, it is me who is behind keeping up with the Drupal development ;-)

Everson,

Good luck! I hope your son will be fine.

Cheers,
-ROR

Unfortunately he get a little worst today. Maybe he'll be internalized in a hospital, my wife is at the doctor with him now. Thanks anyway.

But romca, don't think you'll be alone at ejournal, since I become a ejournal developer that I can take some of the blame too. I know I didn't too a lot of work until now, but I feel responsible for it too. Let's share the burden. :)

I'll have to travel this week and it will be a travel with a lot of free hours, so I'll probably post something.

---

I tested the forms and it seems that's they're all working ok.
I removed all custom layouts from ejournal admin (and I think we shouldn't use custom layouts in admin pages - but we can discuss this), the public page (ejournal_public_page) still has the calls to ejournal_theme_custom and I think that at this stage, we should work on making theme_custom.

Just out of curiousity,

Have you guys checked out the Deadwood module for automating much of the Drupal 5.x - Drupal 6.x porting of module?

Everson, I hope your son is doing well. Best of luck to you.

Regards,
-ROR

Hi ROR,

Most of the porting part is already done, we're now working in the issues that are not only a default port issues. But thanks anyway.

And my son is better, thanks. ;)

okey dokey,

great to see that this module is floating along.

i hope that your son has fully recovered nobios.

thank you great developers for porting this module along. by the way I am a PHP beginner and i speak somewhat rough english. how difficult would it be for me to help contributing. i have programmed in PHP before but when I looked over all this stuff i was like omg wtf! i have no idea where stuff starts!

anyhow - i support this petition. let me know how I can help.

regards to my friends,
-rich

no feedback?

Hi richroman,

please excuse my delay, im so busy, that even sleeping is an issue. The last time i touched ejournal was last week. if you want to help us with coding, you will need to familiarize yourself with drupal (api.drupal.org is a good resource and the drupal online handbook is a better one). if you are interested, you could look into the ejournal_pathauto.module that i commited into the CVS last week. There you can see an example of a ejournal-plugin and it is almost finished. We just need to add appropriate calls of the pathauto module.

sorry again, if you need more help, pls write to my e-mail, i will try to be quicker

best

Hi romca,

Please call me Richard or Rich. richroman feels kind of awkward (like a rich Roman?). Anyhow - thank you for the reply. I will start looking at the relevant elements.

Best regards for my friends!
Rich

So, just got back into my state. What a horrid and busy month this has been. This election is also quite pathetic and depressing, the state of American politics. Add this crap economy and the financial crisis. And OPEC is threatening to cut production to raise the gas prices. There is not end to the greed.

Any news with this? How is it going with everyone.

Is the 6.x version ready for testing! I'm on it!

cheers everyone!
ray murphy

I too am curious how this is going.

I have a live server ready for testing this module in Drupal 6.

Regards
~ROR

the other day i confused myself, being in d6 i thought i was using d5. so in short, the ejournal core is working (and i would think pretty well), yet the plugins are not yet available.
it is just to change the menu settings and their forms for them to appear. you can get the d6 from CVS, i would like to make the alpha release at least with some plugins available

roman

"roman"

Was that for me?

That is really cool that it is so good that you confused yourself. What rough timeline are you expecting for an alpha release?

I find it somewhat difficult to write PHP code around Drupal. I tried playing around with a few things from here, but could not get it to work well.

-Rich

roman is my name :) -- and I found it funny to see yours nick richroman, Rich ;)

the rough timeline is 2 weeks for the alpha release

Hey Roman,

What a cool name you have! Welcome to the cool name club.

Meanwhile I will be practicing the PHP with Drupal.

Cheers!

Richard Roman

Hi! guys,
I've been visiting this page many times in the last month to find some good news. Everson and Romca, many many thanks for putting effots in porting this module to drupal 6.x. Not only me, I'm sure there will be several others who are eagerly waiting for this module to come out with a 6.x port. Infact, just because this module is not available in 6.x I have decided to go with drupal5.

Thanks for coming up with a date (however informal it may be) for the early alpha version, I wish you good health and success!

Regards,
Samba

Which plugins are you waiting on?

romca, in testing the last commit I get an error:

warning: include(./sites/default/modules/ejournal/archive.tpl.php) [function.include]: failed to open stream: No such file or directory in /Users/everson/Sites/ejournal/includes/theme.inc on line 979.
warning: include() [function.include]: Failed opening './sites/default/modules/ejournal/archive.tpl.php' for inclusion (include_path='.') in /Users/everson/Sites/ejournal/includes/theme.inc on line 979.

forgot to commit, it is there now

as to the jadowd's question: i am not waiting on plugins, i am updating them all ;) now that the core works and even displays something, the plugins should be easier. it may be ready today (no promises though)

hi,
so i commited the plugins and the templates, found many things in the core and everything is rough. but ready for the alpha release (yes, everything works - until you prove the contrary ;)). i will probably roll out the alpha release tomorrrow.

i hope you guys are ready to find your own way through it, because the documentation is outdated -- it would be great if somebody could write up some -- there are new functions (eg. templates) and the ejournal does not tell you which links to use to display eg. article or archive of a issue X -- and if you do not use the correct syntax, you can be confronted with the blank page. the themeing system will get more attention, for instance, right now it is not ready to handle the different templates for different journals, but that is really a little drop in the ocean of all the changes.

best

Rich, saasira, ROR, rmurphy,
the first d6 release (the dev one) has been published -- it is thanks mainly to your questions and expression of support. So BIG THANK YOU. Otherwise, I am not sure it would have happened.
Sorry for the late port anyway, the Drupal is an excellent platform but those changes introduced with every new release are something very painful... Well, it's done - now we can focus on new features and fixing the bugs. Thumbs up also to Everson, I hope you son is fine!

roman

PS: Please note, the dev release should be available from the download page some time in the next 12 hours (the packaging script interval)

PSS: i am going to close this long thread, pls use new ones if necessary

I think I speak for all of us when I say: THANK YOU VERY MUCH

Looking over the demonstration, I must this looks to be an extremely nice plugin. Who knows, maybe it will become very popular and more people will be willing to support, leading this to be a candidate against dominating establishments such as OJS (Open-Source) and Scholar1 (Commercial). For some reason the academic side of Drupal gets a little neglected... :(

I will be more than happy to tinker with this module and start writing documentation for it.

I was not sure whether to post a new thread for this, but I figured the old thread was appropriate. On another note, seems like the packing script is taking a little while...

Cheers Roman!
-ROR

looks like the dev release is presented only alongside a normal release, so i created an alpha one. now it can be downloaded
thanks

Hm...that is strange. I have seen many standalone dev releases. CVS is somewhat of a PITA, however.

Getting on testing and tinkering with this module!

Thanks a lot!

Best Regards,
-ROR

Hi Nadeem,

sorry, this will be a lengthy reply.

Drupal, imo, is a great choice to what you want to do (including peer review). I don't know if you are using ejournal module (or ejournal install profile - that one is new and does look like ejournal too) - yet I will reply anyway...

For Medical Journals, an essential step, before articles are published is 'Peer Review'. The submitted article is sent by the editor to one or a few experts (reviewers) in that field, who would comment on things like appropriateness, significance, the validity of the research methods, statistical tests used, etc and based on this 'peer review', a decision is made by the editor to accept or reject or ask for revisions of the article. Articles are only published if they have gone through these reviews.

--depends on your requirements. If you dont require double-blind review, you can be fine with existing modules of Drupal (if you want something like transparent review where the community can influence the reviewing process, you should forget about OJS right away) Nevertheless, even if it looks simple at the beginning, the peer review is not a simple task from the programmers perspective, but if you find an easily configurable workflow mechanism, you have 80%

Now, for my website, I have setup a system, where an author is able to submit his article and upload other files using a form. But after that, I have been relying on emails for the rest of the process and fall back on drupal after the articles has been vetted by peers and I then create the content.

-- generally, the whole process can be split into:
1. submission
2. peer-review
3. copyediting and technical stuff

for publishing, the 1. is usually fine with some el.forms for authors to submit articles (but you also want them to be able to see the progress of their manuscripts - if yes, then it must be integrated with the 2.)

In Drupal, it would be possible to write some sort of general workflow (and I even started, but the problem is that e-journal is just a hobby) using workflow module and drupal actions. To some programmer, that could take 1 month - but I dont know about any module that did it. Look at the workflow, ng-workflow and other actions modules

I need some ideas as to how I can integrate the peer review within drupal, so I can also track the process. I have thought of:
1) using a resrticted forum, where the author and reviewers can post messages. But I need the reviewers to use a standardised form and i cant think of how i can get the reviewers to respond to the initial post with an online form. ( and seperate for each article)
-- they can get e-mail with one-click action (that hyperlink could automatically record their action or log them in and show the form)
-- forum is obvious way but not good if you want to hide some parts (think that there are several roles: authors, reviewers, editors, chief editor - and some of them can see everything, some of them only something)
2) using polls
-- ejournal module is using voting, but for your needs it is too much simple
-- polls are very simple anyway, you need to record decisions, get comments from reviewers, fire actions based on the decision

3) use a bridge to connect to OJS
-- I guess you reviewed OJS before and decided Drupal is better choice, in OJS the peer-review is the morst important thing (and rightly so). If you are fine with its limitations, you better switch the submission and peer revies to OJS and publish in Drupal -- no great bridge is necessary, a lot of tasks need to be done in OJS manually anyway - so you will be the bridge ;-)
-- if you are up to smart solutions, look at http://dpubs.org/, find a general workflow system in Drupal or write a peer-review module

hth

roman