Publication requests
Reviewing requests to publish a project or dataset.
How-to
A project or dataset manager who wants their recordset published submits a publication request from the recordset's sidebar, giving the authors, a title and their intentions and acknowledging that the data holds nothing sensitive and that coordinates may be released. The Publications page under Platform Management is where those requests are reviewed. It records your decision so that the requester can see it; it does not itself publish anything.
How it works
A request belongs to one recordset and passes through four statuses.
| Status | Meaning |
|---|---|
Queued |
Submitted and waiting for an administrator's decision. |
Approved |
An administrator approved it. |
Rejected |
An administrator declined it. |
Withdrawn |
The requester, or a manager of the recordset, withdrew it before a decision. |
Only one queued request can exist per recordset at a time, so a manager who wants to change what they asked for withdraws the open request and submits a new one. Once a request is approved, rejected or withdrawn it is final; a new request is a new row. Requesters see the latest request and its status under "Review for Publication" on the recordset page, described in Projects and datasets explained.
The request queue
Each row shows the recordset code and title, the publication title and authors, the stated intentions, who requested it, the reviewer once there is one, and the status. The status filter shows queued requests only, or any other single status, or everything; the search box matches any column. The list shows the full history on record.
Queued rows carry two actions: Approve Request and Reject Request. Rows in any other status have no actions.
Approve or reject a request
- Filter to
Queued. - Read the request: the authors, the title and the intentions, and the recordset it concerns. If you need to check the recordset's contents or membership, open it from the Projects or Datasets page; see Overseeing projects and datasets.
- Click the approve or reject icon. The dialog repeats the request details and names the recordset.
- Click Approve or Reject to confirm.
The request's status changes, your account is recorded as the reviewer, and the time of the decision is stored. The requester sees the new status the next time they open "Review for Publication". There is no field for a reason, so if you reject a request, tell the requester why by another route.
What approval does and does not do
Approval is a recorded decision and nothing more. It does not change the project or dataset, does not alter who can see it, does not export or release any records, and does not notify anyone. The platform has no publication mechanism attached to this queue; the queue exists so that the institution has a place to receive, consider and answer requests, and a record of who answered them.
Treat the approved status as the institution's authorisation to proceed with publication by whatever means it uses, such as preparing a data package with the download jobs or releasing records through another channel. Those are separate steps and are not triggered here.
Good to know
- Requests cannot be edited by anyone after submission. If the details are wrong, reject it or ask the requester to withdraw and resubmit.
- A decision cannot be reversed. If you approve in error, there is nothing to undo, because approval changes nothing but the status; ask the requester to submit a fresh request if a formal rejection is needed on record.
- A withdrawn request stays in the list with its status, so the history of a recordset's requests is visible.