REDCap reports that do not contain sensitive information can be made "public." A public report is accessible by anyone with the unique URL, without needing to log in to REDCap or be given access to a project.

Overview of Public Reports in REDCap

What is a "Public" Report?

When you publish a report as public in REDCap, it means it can be accessed by anyone who has the URL. Public reports do not allow input or modification of data, but do allow searching through the data contained in the report. A public report will not be indexed by search engines, but anyone who has the link can access the report without logging in to REDCap or being added to the project, and may share the link with others.

It is your responsibility to ensure that a public report never contains sensitive information that should not be publicly available! There are built-in limitations to making a report public designed to prevent the inclusion of any fields that may contain identifiers, however it is still your responsibility to ensure that a public report does not contain sensitive information.

Public reports can be used to share information with stakeholders or external partners without needing to give them access to your project or have them set up a REDCap account.

How to Make a REDCap Report Public:

1. Create a report. Do not include any fields that are potential identifiers.
2. View the report you have created. Make sure it does not contain sensitive information.
3. Edit the report, and choose the "Set as Public" setting:

   

4. Agree to the checks in the pop-up confirming that you are not sharing sensitive information:

   

5. You may now share the link to the report with anyone who needs to access it:

   

Restrictions on Public Reports

Because reports have the potential to share sensitive individualized information, there are many restrictions in place. REDCap automatically prevents a report from being made public if it contains any fields that have keywords in the name or label that suggest it could be an identifier. For example, if a report contains a variable that has the keyword "name" in the unique variable name or label, you will not be able to make the report public, regardless of if the field actually contains sensitive information. (e.g. if you have a field that is labeled, "Name your favorite Star Wars character:" on you will not be able to make the report public because the label contains the word 'name'.)

You must create and view a report before you are able to change access to make it a public report.

Once a report is public, you cannot make changes to it. If you would like to modify a public report, you will need to disable public access first, make the changes, view the report, and then make it public again. You will then need to verify that it contains no sensitive information again.

If you have a UW-Madison REDCap project and have questions about Public Reports, please send them to REDCap@ictr.wisc.edu

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