• Merge PublishedDandiset → Dandiset, PublishedAsset → Asset. Publication-only fields (doi, publishedBy, datePublished, releaseNotes on Dandiset; publishedBy, datePublished on Asset) become optional, and the publication requirements move into a datePublished-gated check_publication_status model validator:

  • datePublished is None (draft) → publication-only fields must be absent;
  • datePublished set (published) → enforce the former Published* rules (publishedBy/url/doi presence, stricter id/url patterns, check_filesbytes, digest_sha256check), reporting all violations in one error.

  dandi-archive injects datePublished before validating, so the gated checks fire exactly as the Published* classes did.

• Keep BareAsset (Asset still inherits it); align its schemaKey to Literal["BareAsset", "Asset"] (so Asset narrows to "Asset", the Contributor/Activity idiom).

• Remove the Publishable mixin; add PublishedDandiset/PublishedAsset as deprecated aliases.

• Simplify ensure_schemakey to a plain schemaKey == class-name check.

• to_datacite asserts the published precondition (datePublished set) the PublishedDandiset type used to guarantee.

The publish-only checks could instead be triggered explicitly by the caller (e.g. a Pydantic validation-context flag passed by the publish flow) rather than by the presence of datePublished. We chose data-driven gating because:

• It can be expressed in LinkML; an explicit context cannot. Gating on a real field is a conditional constraint on the data, which is exactly what a LinkML rule expresses (gen-json-schema emits it as if/then). A caller-supplied validation mode has no LinkML equivalent — LinkML describes only the data instance, not how validation is invoked — so it would have to live as hand-written Python forever, outside the source of truth, working against the migration this change is meant to enable.
• It travels with the data. The gated checks fire through both validate() and direct construction (Dandiset(**data) / model_validate). A context flag only rides model_validate(..., context=...): the terse PublishedDandiset(**meta) form (used by to_datacite and in tests) cannot pass one, so it would silently skip the publish checks. Beyond the call-site rewrites that would force, a constructor whose enforcement quietly depends on how it is invoked is a lasting programming hazard.
• It matches the domain. datePublished present ⟺ published is a real invariant: a draft never carries it, and the archive injects it only when building a publishable version. "Published" is a state of the record, not a mode a caller opts into.
• Published-ness stays introspectable. With gating, "is this published?" is just obj.datePublished is not None; with a context flag, whether an object was validated as published is ephemeral to the call and recorded nowhere on the object.

• Generated JSON Schema (verified by before/after diff): draft Dandiset/Asset gain only optional, readOnly publication properties — nothing newly required, no pattern tightened — so the dandi-archive Meditor is unaffected (it hides readOnly props). The published-*.json schemas become the relaxed versions, with publication strictness enforced by the gated validator.
• PublishedDandiset/PublishedAsset/BareAsset imports continue to work in dandi-cli/dandi-archive.

• dandi-cli (lockstep with adopting this release): set schemaKey = "Asset" on bare metadata at upload, since BareAsset.schemaKey is now "BareAsset" and the server does not normalize it.
• Later: remove the deprecated aliases once consumers adopt the consolidated names (and update dandi-archive's views/schema.py model mapping).