Once a user has created an account in a Symbiota portal, they can be granted permissions for one or many collections in that portal. Permissions can be granted by administrators of individual collections or by the portal manager or other superadministrator. Portals have different policies for granting permissions to users, so it is best to contact the portal manager or individual collections for which you would like user permissions.

Types of User Permissions

Permissions that can be assigned by a collection manager or other administrator

• Administrator: (generally a curator or manager of a collection) can use all tools in the Administration Control Panel. For example, this user can edit the contact information and description for your collection, view edits made to your records, batch upload data, and use data cleaning tools. Administrators can also delete records.

• Editor: (generally a collector, technician, digitizer, or volunteer) can use all tools in the Data Editor Control Panel, including adding and editing records, printing labels, batch annotating specimens, batch georeferencing specimens, and managing loans. Editors cannot delete records.

• Rare Species Reader: can view locality data for all specimens in a collection, even if the locality information is redacted from the general public (see Redacting / Obscuring Data).

• Personal Observation/Specimen Profile Manager: can add, edit, and manage data belonging to them in the “personal observations profile” (variously labeled the “specimens being processed” or “general research observations” profile, depending on the portal). The personal observations profile is a single collection in the portal that contains pooled data from all personal observation profile managers; however, a single user can only edit data that they have personally added to this collection through their user profile.

• Create a Checklist: can create new checklists and datasets. See Creating a Checklist.

Permission types that can only be assigned by a superadministrator

• Global Rare Species Reader: can view locality data for all specimens in a portal (if provided). See Redacting / Obscuring Data.

• Glossary Editor: can add descriptions, images, or other information to the portal glossary (if enabled)

• Identification Keys Administrator: can add, delete, and edit characters states used in the identification keys (if enabled)

• Identification Keys Editor: can edit character states used in the identification keys (if enabled)

• Taxonomy Editor: can edit the taxonomic thesaurus, including adding and deleting taxa, editing the acceptance of a taxon, and adding synonym or children taxa

• Taxon Profile Editor: can add information to taxon profile pages, such as images and descriptions