---
title: Roles and Permissions
description: What each institution role can do, and how the contributor submission workflow operates.
section: reference
order: 3
updated: 2026-07-01
verified: 2026-07-01
related: [guides/collections-and-permissions, getting-started/creating-an-institution]
features: [memberships]
---

# Roles and Permissions

A reference for the four institution roles, what each allows, and how community contributions are reviewed.

Accounts are global — one login works across all of Preservated — but **permissions are per institution**. A user can be an admin in one institution and a viewer in another. Membership in an institution is granted by invitation; simply visiting an institution grants nothing.

## The role ladder

From lowest to highest, each role including the ones below it:

| Capability                                          | Viewer | Contributor | Editor | Admin |
| --------------------------------------------------- | :----: | :---------: | :----: | :---: |
| Browse members-only material                        |   ✓    |      ✓      |   ✓    |   ✓   |
| Submit new artifacts for review                     |        |      ✓      |   ✓    |   ✓   |
| Edit own pending submissions                        |        |      ✓      |   ✓    |   ✓   |
| Log in to the admin area                            |        |             |   ✓    |   ✓   |
| Edit any artifact, collection, or content page      |        |             |   ✓    |   ✓   |
| Review and accept/reject submissions                |        |             |   ✓    |   ✓   |
| Run AI operations (analysis, transcription, batch)  |        |             |   ✓    |   ✓   |
| See staff-tier (editors + admins) artifacts         |        |             |   ✓    |   ✓   |
| Manage members and invitations                      |        |             |        |   ✓   |
| Institution settings, deletion                      |        |             |        |   ✓   |
| Export data, audit log, AI spend                    |        |             |        |   ✓   |

Anonymous visitors and logged-in non-members see public material only.

## Admin area access

Editors and admins can open an institution's admin area (`/your-institution/admin`). What each sees there differs:

- **Editors** work with content: the dashboard, artifacts, collections, tours, website pages and posts, imports, batch operations, screening and sensitivity queues, the report builder, locations, people/subjects/places authorities, engagement analytics, and the review queue.
- **Admins** additionally manage the institution itself: **Members**, **Settings**, **Custom Fields**, **Site Settings**, the **Identifiers** registry, the **Audit Log**, **AI Spend**, and **Export**.

Admin-only sections are hidden from editors' navigation, and every admin page independently verifies your role on the server — a bookmarked link or direct request to an admin-only page returns "Forbidden" rather than the page. A few operations inside editor-visible pages are also admin-only, such as resolving screening and sensitivity review decisions and deleting batch-update proposals — editors can see those queues but not decide them.

## The contributor workflow

Contributors let community members add to the archive without broad edit rights. A contributed artifact moves through submission statuses:

1. **Draft** — visible to and editable by the contributor (editors can see it to help).
2. **Pending** — submitted for review; the contributor can still edit until it's decided.
3. **Accepted** — becomes a normal institutional record; standard edit rules apply from here (the contributor can no longer edit it).
4. **Rejected** — returned with review notes; the contributor may revise and resubmit.
5. **Withdrawn** — the contributor pulled it back before a decision.

Contributors can only ever edit **their own** submissions, and only while in draft or pending (or rejected, for resubmission). Editors and admins review queues under **Admin → Review**.

## Related controls

- **Who can see content** is governed by visibility tiers on collections and artifacts, not by roles — see [Collections and Visibility](/docs/en-US/guides/collections-and-permissions).
- **Platform admins** (Preservated staff) have a separate global role and aren't part of institution membership.