Open Journal Systems Help

Administrative Functions

Several administrative functions are available in the site administration area. These functions should generally be used with caution, as improper use could lead to unexpected results.

System Information

General information about the server environment and OJS version history (including past upgrades). A web-based interface to view the OJS configuration file is also provided.

Expire User Sessions

Clears all active user sessions in the system, requiring any user that is currently logged in to sign in to the system again.

Clear Data Caches

Clears all cached data, including locale information, help cache, and search cache.

Clear Template Cache

Clears all cached versions of HTML templates. This function may be useful to force templates to be reloaded after customizations have been made.

Merge Users

The Merge Users feature allows the Site Administrator to merge two user accounts into a single account, transferring edit assignments, submissions, and numerous other records from one account to the other and effectively deleting the first.

Unlike the Merge Users feature available to a Journal Manager, which is limited to merging user accounts for a particular journal, the Merge Users feature under Site Administration allows the Site Administrator to merge any two user accounts, even across different journals.

The following items are transferred:

  • Article authorship
  • Public comments on articles
  • Article notes
  • Editor assignments and decisions
  • Review assignments
  • Layout editor assignments
  • Proofreader assignments
  • Article email and event log entries
  • Reviewer access keys
  • Roles
  • Subscriptions (please see below)

The following items are not transferred:

  • Sessions
  • Notification status (i.e. whether the user has signed up to receive notifications about journal news)
  • Editorial team memberships
  • Section Editor status on sections
  • User profile information (e.g. first name, last name, etc.)

This feature should be used with caution, as it is not reversible and involves the transfer of records from one user to another.

For subscriptions, the merge feature performs the following actions: For Individual Subscriptions, the second user's subscription is transferred to the first user only if is valid and if the first user does not already have a valid subscription for a given journal. For Institutional Subscriptions, all of the subscriptions for which the second user is identified as the contact person are transferred to the first user, who becomes the new contact person for the subscriptions.