openlibhums / openlibhums/janeway

Permission denied when opening an assignment link

Open
#2,970 3 comments 0 reactions 1 assignee View on GitHub

@ajrbyers is already working on this.

Since Aug 13, 2026.

bug
Dominant language
Python
Stars
238
Forks
97
Avg merge
9d 1h
Merged PRs (30d)
8

Description

Describe the bug
Revierwers, copyeditors, typesetters, and authors sometimes see "Permission denied" when they try to follow a task link sent to them via email. This most often happens when they are already logged into Janeway with the wrong account. The task has been assigned to a different account or email, so their current account does not have the correct permissions.

While I can understand why this happens, the real problem is that the user is given no information to understand why this is happening and how to resolve the problem.

Janeway version
v1.4.1

To Reproduce
Steps to reproduce the behavior:

  1. Log in to Janeway.
  2. Follow a link for a task not assigned to the account you're logged in with, such as a Review Assignment Request link (with one-step reviewer access turned off)
  3. See "Permission denied"

Expected behavior
Janeway should recognize the problem and provide the user with the information to understand the error and fix it, in a secure way.

Additional context
This may be difficult to achieve in a secure way, but it is definitely possible and worth doing given how often this problem occurs.

Contributor guide

Open the contributing guide

First steps

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  2. Comment on the issue to say you are picking it up — it saves two people doing the same work.
  3. Fork the repository and make your change on a branch.
  4. Open a pull request that references the issue number.

Assessment

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