Stream: community

Topic: collection visibility by group(?) membership

view this post on Zulip Don Sizemore (Apr 30 2026 at 15:11):

Hello all,

I don't think there's a way to do what I want to do using the current Dataverse code, but I'd like to ask:

We're converting an existing Dataverse instance to expand its purpose/scope. We would like to put its existing collections in a sub-collection, and effectively hide that collection and its contents from any and all prying eyes, save for members of a group assigned rights on that collection.

We would like to publish datasets to follow proper archival procedure. Permissions are additive in Dataverse, so I don't find a way to hide published collections/datasets. My current stab is this:

  1. Protect the (published) collection and dataset metadata from prying eyes using a <Location /dataverse/sub-collection> directive in the Apache proxy, and
  2. restrict datafile downloads.

I concede that the collection/dataset proxy protection isn't 100% in and of itself and leaves the API wide open, but there are no sensitive data contained in the metadata. I think our Security group will allow this.

William and I have been unable to identify a better solution, but I welcome suggestions.

Thank you!

view this post on Zulip Philip Durbin 🚀 (Apr 30 2026 at 15:29):

Yeah, Dataverse isn't designed to work this way, sorry.

I mean, if you could go back in time I guess you would never publish these collections nor the datasets within them.

Last updated: May 30 2026 at 09:11 UTC