EPrints User Group 2015-01-13

John Salter and John Beaman, University of Leeds

Intro

• Hello: we're John Salter and John Beaman from the University of Leeds.
• We've spent some time trying to write an Access Control system for EPrints. It's been a horror.
• One of our use-cases is for Research Data, but it could be used on other repository types.

Out of the box User Access Control

• EPrints (you all know what this is, right..?) has basic control at the document level - the 'security' field:
  • public (Open Access)
  • validuser (anyone who's got an account on that EPrints instance)
  • staffonly (Repository editors/admins)
• This doesn't cover the requirements for some repositories...

Requirements

• Control access to EPrints, Documents
• Control access based on:
  • User attributes e.g. signed-in via Shibboleth
  • Location e.g. on-campus
• Simple interface to assign restrictions

EPACL: EPrints Access Control Layer

• Doesn't overwrite any existing 'security' specified on documents.

Dealing with rejection

• What happens when someone is denied access?
  • Document landing pages
  • Restricted summary pages
  • Contact details to request access?

ACL Objects

• ACL Authority
  • Corresponds to a method of authorisation (e.g. Shibboleth, LDAP etc.)

• ACL Role
  • Authorised by an ACL Authority with zero or more 'filters' applied
  • Filters act as additional requirements (e.g. ACL_Authority='LDAP', Filter='dc=leeds.ac.uk')

• ACL Group
  • Each ACL Group consists of one or more ACL Roles
  • The ACL Roles are combined within an ACL Group by being 'OR'ed or 'AND'ed together
  • One or more ACL Groups are applied to EPrints data objects (e.g. eprints, documents)
  • The ACL Groups applied to EPrints data objects are 'OR'ed or 'AND'ed togther

Summary Page citation style

• How do we deal with rejected requests (i.e. what do we show)?
• We can define different citation styles depending on whether the request is allowed or denied
• 'Restricted' citations may be required (e.g. to satisfy the minimum metadata requirements of a DOI)

Document-level landing pages

• Born out of DOI requirements
• Individual documents may have their own DOI, so ideally need their own 'landing page'
• Document landing pages should contain at least the mandatory metadata fields if linked from a DOI

Request vs User

• Two basic steps to authorise access - request and user
• First EPrints checks if the request has appropriate access rights
• If so, any additional user requirements are also checked
• If not, the request is denied (since the user's credentials are irrelevant at that point)

Homeless thoughts

• Summary Page citation style
• Access logging
• Login sources
• Modular design
• Request vs User
• Describe ACL_Group, ACL_Role, ACL_Authority
• DOIs at Doc level = landing page citation style
• Objects and SubObjects