This is a good question that I can’t say I’ve thought that much about. In part because I think of TERP as a research space for our team first and foremost; everything and anyone else is secondary. It might not be good to think of users in that kind of hierarchical way, but I think it’s necessary for me as a PD. But I also think the platform is designed that way. It’s a research space and archive.
I don’t know if the platform is discoverable. If you search for energy rights project, the first several items are TERP. But if you search for energy rights, we’re not even on the first page of a google search. Otherwise, the platform is listed in my email signature and through other PECE projects. I think those are the only really ways its known at this point.
We have quite a bit of open, public content for people to access. And we try to put things that would be most useful to users beyond our research team in the slider: The water rate case; Philadelphia news you can use; information about the survey; the most recent media brief; and the Energy in COVID-19 page.
For interview transcripts, where there are links to these artifacts we state that they are for IRB approved researchers only and to contact us for access. I think we are moving in the direction of, if someone wanted to access the restricted spaces, they would have to join the research team, they would have to be interviewed by myself and agree to the TERP collaboration protocols.