Restricting access to bitstream while metadata is publicly available

[Victoria Eke]

Hello,

I am working with a student who is concerned about public access to their forthcoming thesis. We are looking at options to have the metadata publicly available (author name, title, abstract), but to restrict access to the bitstream. The embargo option, from what I can tell, is limited to 4 years, so that will not work. 

Any suggestions or guidance would be greatly appreciated. Thank you!

-Victoria 

[Никола Шћепанчевић]

You can restrict access to a group of users, or individual user; you should have an option Access Control->Authorization in your Administrator panel.

[Titus]

Hi,

Code level configuration if dspace/config/modules/authentication-ip.cfg and dspace/config/local.cfg may be required. Please check that too.

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Thank you,

Titus J Sam

[mw...@iu.edu]

On Tue, Apr 07, 2026 at 09:05:39PM +0000, 'Victoria Eke' via DSpace Technical Support wrote:
> I am working with a student who is concerned about public access to their forthcoming thesis. We are looking at options to have the metadata publicly available (author name, title, abstract), but to restrict access to the bitstream. The embargo option, from what I can tell, is limited to 4 years, so that will not work.
>
> Any suggestions or guidance would be greatly appreciated. Thank you!

It is always helpful to include the DSpace version. DSpace has had
two very different implementations of embargo. The newer one (which
is no longer very new) should be able to do what you want.

The metadata for an item are exposed according to the policy records
on the Item; the content is controlled by policy records on the
Bitstreams. So you want to have a policy granting Read to Anonymous
on the Item, and to make certain that there is *not* such a policy on
any Bitstream which is to be embargoed.

Policies always grant access. If no policies of an Item or Bitstream
currently apply, only members of Administrators have access (because
policy checking is always skipped for members of that group).

An embargo, in the typical publication sense of making content
unavailable until a specific date, can be achieved for an embargoed
Bitstream by granting Read on the Bitstream to Anonymous *with a
starting date*. The policy will not take effect until the starting
date.

See discussion of access control here:
https://wiki.lyrasis.org/pages/viewpage.action?pageId=379126414

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Mark H. Wood
Lead Technology Analyst

University Library
Indiana University Indianapolis
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