Hello,
I am working with multiple groups of citizen scientists collecting water quality data across a catchment. Each group has its own Epicollect project and aspires for their water quality checked data to become open access so any member of the public can view and download their datasets. However, because all citizen scientists uploading data have gone through training to become registered volunteers they don’t want anyone else to be able to add data to their project. Obviously this option (which sits between the current current private/ public settings) doesn’t currently exist. I wonder if its something other organisations using your platform might also find really beneficial and something you would considering adding as a new option? Otherwise, any other suggestions to overcoming this issue would be appreciated.
Many thanks in advance.
Hi,
if you want to restrict access to the data the only option is to set the project as private, otherwise it would be impossible to cherry-pick what users can add data and what users cannot.
There are 5 different user roles on Epicollect5, maybe COLLECTOR is the one you are looking for? Please see →
Moreover, a common approach when dealing with multiple groups of users with different access capabilities is explained here →
If you need to expose the data publicly, that can be done by exporting all the data from the private projects and using a third-party visualisation tool like Google Maps, Kepler GL, Carto for example, or our own Microreact.
You could also re-import data into a public-facing Epicollect5 project when the data collection is over, providing that you are happy with the limitations of bulk uploads in Epicollect5. More info at →
We hope this helps
Ok thank you. It seems what we are looking for isn’t possible within the confines of the platform. We want a setting that would enable the public to view and download data, but only specified users to add it.
Thanks anyway for your advice!
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