Digital Commons allows you to block or reduce the visibility of most kinds of content when needed. This page describes the options that administrators can use to:

• Hide content from other areas of the site, including search.
• Exclude content from certain site-level pages.
• Withdraw an unpublished record or remove a published one.

See the sections below for descriptions of these options. For information about restricting access to full-text files, see Access Control and Embargoes: Options for Restricting Content.

Hide Content

About Hiding Content

You can hide a community, publication structure, or published record to remove it from search and most areas of the site, either temporarily or permanently. Hidden content remains accessible to administrators and anyone with the direct URL. 

While content is hidden, it is not possible to publish saved changes to it, though administrators can still make, save, and preview changes. Communities and publication structures hidden before they are published to the site will not go live on the site until they are unhidden and published.

Hiding a publication structure such as a series hides the records within it. Hiding a community removes all of its grouped structures and sub-communities from site-level pages.

Steps to Hide Content

1. Go to the Configuration page for the community, series, or other structure you wish to hide.
   • To hide an individual record, go to the Configuration page for the publication structure that contains the record, then click the article number for the record. (The article number is the number found at the end of the published article’s URL. For example, an article with the URL “site.example.edu/papers/5” is article number 5.)
2. Check the box next to Hide this [publication] on the repository or equivalent setting for the publication type. For example, “publication” will be replaced by “community” or “series” depending on the context you’re in.
   
3. Click Save Changes.
4. If you are hiding a live structure containing published records or hiding an individual published record: Click the Publish saved changes link in the Configuration sidebar to deindex the record(s) from search. A confirmation email will not be sent once the saved changes are published, due to the context being hidden.
5. To remove references to the hidden content elsewhere on the site, see the table below for where to update for that type of content.

To unhide content, deselect the Hide this [publication] on the repository configuration described above, click Save Changes, and click Publish saved changes again in the context you're unhiding as well as the other locations indicated in the table below.

What Happens When You Hide Content?

Hiding prevents the ability to publish saved changes to the hidden content. A message will appear on the Configuration page to indicate that the content is hidden and cannot currently be updated. For example, a hidden series displays the following message:

Administrators can still make and preview changes while content is hidden, but those changes will not appear on the site until the content is unhidden and the Publish saved changes link is used to update the context.

Hiding also affects the visibility of content in other areas of the repository, as described below.

Affected locations on the site after hiding:

If content was previously live long enough to be indexed in external search engines, it will remain indexed and cannot be removed unless it is fully deleted. Please contact Consulting Services with any questions, as additional steps are required for search engine deindexing. 

Exclude Content from Specific Site Pages

About Excluding Content

Excluding can be useful to reduce the visibility of content without affecting its behavior or availability. Communities, publication structures, and articles have options to exclude content from one or more of these site-level pages:

• The Collections page (specific label is customizable per site)
• The Submit Research page
• Featured lists available via homepage modules: Top 10 Downloads, Recent Additions, and Paper of the Day

Steps to Exclude Content

1. Go to the Configuration page for the publication structure or community you wish to exclude from site pages.
   • To exclude an individual record, go to the Configuration page for the publication structure that contains the record, then click the article number for the record. (The article number can be found at the end of the published article’s URL. For example, an article with the URL “site.example.edu/papers/5” is article number 5.)
2. Check the box next to the desired exclude setting (the exclude settings for a series are pictured here).
   
   • Publication structures (series, etc.) show all three exclude options listed above. You can choose any or all of them.
   • Communities do not show the last option (exclude from featured item lists), since communities only hold other structures, not records.
   • Individual records only show the option to exclude from featured item lists, since the Collections page and Submit Research page don’t display individual records.
3. Click Save Changes.
4. Next, navigate to the site level. Click the Publish saved changes link in the site-level Configuration sidebar to ensure that the excluded content will no longer show on the relevant site pages or lists. You will receive an update confirmation email when the site update is complete.

What Happens When You Exclude Content?

Unlike hiding, none of the exclude settings affect the behavior of the context itself. For example, content can be updated and articles will still appear in search, usage reports, and batch revise spreadsheets. In addition, items within excluded contexts can still be collected using the content collecting tool.

Withdraw or Remove a Record

About Withdrawing and Removing

A record may be either withdrawn or removed, depending on whether it has been published. Unpublished submissions have a Withdraw submission link in the sidebar of their Submission details page in Manage Submissions: 

Once a submission is published, the link changes to Remove submission:

“Submission” is a customizable label, so exact text for these links may differ depending on whether the label has been customized for a particular context.

Administrators can withdraw or remove any content, both unpublished and published. Authors can withdraw their own submissions only until the item has been published. 

Steps to Withdraw or Remove a Submission

1. Go to the Submission details page for the record. This is accessible by clicking the record's title in Manage Submissions within the publication structure that holds the record. For published submissions, you can also click Edit Submission in the Administrator Toolbar when viewing the record's page on the site. 
2. In the Submission details sidebar, select Withdraw submission under “Decision & publication” for an unpublished submission, or Remove submission under “Administration” for a published one.
3. On the subsequent page:
   • If withdrawing an unpublished submission, choose whether to notify authors or not, and then click Withdraw submission.
   • If removing a published submission, text box appears where you can enter a custom message for the authors. If you would like to notify authors, remove or edit the line that says “ADMINISTRATOR: ENTER THE REASONS FOR MAKING THE CHANGE HERE” and then click Remove. If you'd like to remove the item without sending a message, click Remove, no notification.
4. If removing a published submission, click the Publish saved changes link in the sidebar. This step is not necessary when withdrawing. 

What Happens When You Withdraw or Remove a Record?

Withdrawing an unpublished submission will move it from the "Not yet posted" state to the "Withdrawn" state in Manage Submissions. Removing a published submission will move it from the "Posted" state to the "Withdrawn" state in Manage Submissions.

After you publish saved changes for a removed submission:

• The publication structure's article list will no longer display a link to the record. In journals and conferences, volumes/issues and themes/tracks will also not display links to the record.
• The article information page on the site will remain in case there are existing citations/bookmarks to the location. A truncated version of the metadata will remain present on that page for identification purposes.
• The full-text download link, if present, will be replaced by the following text: "This document has been withdrawn." This is in case someone who has cited/bookmarked the page needs to identify what happened to the original article.

Withdrawn or removed submissions cannot be posted unless they are reverted to pending first by Consulting Services. Please ask your consultant about this option if you need to make a previously withdrawn or removed submission available again.

Other Options

The following additional options are available for reducing the visibility of content.

Access control and embargoes: Both of these features restrict viewing or downloading of primary files such as full-text PDFs. These can be enabled or disabled by Consulting Services upon request.

Deletion: Deleting is a permanent removal of content along with its usage history from the DC Dashboard and Author Dashboard. Requests to delete content can be made to Consulting Services.