Study permissions

A study can be set to be private or public. Data can be private, public, or embargoed (shown to exist but not downloadable). These permissions are under the control of the owner of the study.

Public and private studies

A private study (and associated data) can not be seen by anyone who has not been given access to the study by the authors. It is possible to keep a study private and share the study with only specific individuals while keeping the study private to others.

A public study (and associated data) can be seen and downloaded by anyone visiting the site.

Embargoed data

Public studies can contain either public data (which can be downloaded by anyone) or data under "embargo". Data embargo allows the author of a study to allow others to see that data exists for future download while not allowing the download to presently occur.

Embargoing is useful when a publication is under review and the author wants to show reviewers that data will be shared (but is not comfortable with data being shared until the publication is accepted). Data can not be set to be in embargo indefinitely; a date is selected after which data automatically is downloadable.