User Management

Overview

To help academic institutions maintain control over who can access Dewey, we allow university admins to manage user access on the platform. This feature allows university-affiliated librarians to manually review and change the access status of any university-affiliated researcher.

Dewey requires each user to have a dedicated account on the platform. This enables researchers to save datasets directly to their account, collaborate with co-authors, and receive critical email notifications regarding data download status, issues, or team invites. Because of this, we do not offer IP-based access to the Dewey platform.

How it Works

Dewey Creates a Team & Assigns Admin(s)

Dewey will create a dedicated “Team” for your institution. You can assign one or more Admin Users (typically librarians) who are responsible for reviewing and managing access.

• ✅ Admins can approve or deny access
• ✅ Admins receive email notifications of new users
• ✅ Admins can view historical approvals and revoke access at any time

Approving New Users

📘

Dewey offers Signle Sign-On (SSO) integrations for university-wide subscribers to automate user creation and account approval. The following workflow is for insitutinal subscribers not utilizing SSO.

1. New User Registers With a University Email

When a user signs up with a domain like @northstate.edu, our system automatically places their account into a pending state and notifies the designated Admin(s).

🔐

The user will not have access until manually approved.

2. Admin Receives Email Notification

Admins will be directed to the platform where they can review a list of pending approvals.

The admin will also see a notification in the app if there are new pending approvals.

3. Admin Reviews & Approves (or Denies)

In the Admin Dashboard, librarians can:

• View pending approvals
• Approve or deny requests
• Optionally (coming soon): set an expiration date for temporary access

Once the decision is made:

• ✅ The user receives an email indicating whether they’ve been approved or denied
• ✅ Approved users gain immediate access to Dewey’s platform

📘

Note: For departmental or school subscribers, you will often "deny" researchers because they are not associated with the subscribed group, even if they are a valid researcher from another group on campus. Since permissions are team-specific, you are only denying them access permissions for this team, not globally. That user will still be able to access datasets if they are members of a separate team.

User Roles

There are two types of roles for institutional accounts:

• Admins: Can approve and review users and view other admin tools.
• Downloaders: Members who can download the permissioned datasets.

For non-institutional teams, there is also the following role:

• Member: A view-only member of a team who cannot download data.

Additional Admin Tools

Admins can also:

• Review past approvals
  See who was approved and when, including denied users

• Sort & filter user list
  Filter by account creation date or approval date

• Revoke access at any time
  Remove users from the system with a single click

Best Practices for Librarians

• Assign at least two admins for redundancy
• Check pending requests regularly to ensure timely access
• Revoke access for graduated or inactive users quarterly