Currently read permissions in DOORS NG are determined by project area membership.

You are welcome to add your use cases here:

In v6.0 and below, this also depends on how you have set the 'Access Control' in the Project Area properties.
If you have set 'Grant read access to:'  to 'Members of the project area hierarchy', then indeed only project members have read access. (This is the default setting)
But if you have set this to 'Everyone', then everyone has read access.

Reading your question, you may want to use the option to 'Users in the access list only'.
This will provide you with the option to create a list of users that are allowed (at least) read-only access. Other users will not have access, even if they are a member of the project. Note that repository administrators will always have access.

There are other possibilities, like 'only repository admins' or 'Members of the project area hierarchy and users in the access list'.

Additionally you can create team access permissions per folder, by creating Teams for the project area with roles, and then, from withing the project folder drop-down menu, assign team ownership.

Diana Kraaijeveld I understood what you said related to project area level, but couldn't digest last 2 lines. Can you elaborate more team area level read permissions? When I get to the team area configuration page, I am unable to find the read permissions.