Sixteen Roles, One Workflow: Role-Based Authorization and Scope Narrowing — Part I

In a publishing workflow, editors, reviewers, copyeditors and authors need very different visibility. (Part I)

Introduction

This article covers an authorization model spanning sixteen roles, split into full-scope roles that see every submission and scope-narrowed roles limited to what they are assigned or author.

Method and Design

Scope narrowing is applied automatically in the admin: a reviewer sees only assigned submissions, an author only their own.

Discussion

Menu and tool visibility is role-aware; technical tools are restricted to administrator and developer roles.

Authors track their submissions through a separate workspace without entering the admin at all.

Conclusion

Authorization is thus a comprehensive model determining what each role sees, not a single switch.

This part demonstrates the platform's approach on a concrete journal example; the aim is to meet the complex requirements of scholarly publishing with a simple, sustainable architecture. Future work will examine how the model behaves at larger scale and across disciplines.