Apart from the previous (valid!) answer, I think there is another alternative to address at least this part of your question:

The idea is that all the publications lists should show a list of public documents to non-authenticated users, and a list of all documents to authenticated users of the right role.

The way I'd try to implement this, is to use the Group module for al documents targeted to authenticated users. For "public" documents you don't have to do anything I think. As per the "right role", that's a matter of creating the appropriate "groups" (like 1 for each role maybe?), and/or maybe even sub-groups that this module supports.

This module is like Organic groups "little brother", only started in D7 and with a D8 version at the horizon. Personally I'm more and more considering it as a potential alternative for the Content Access module also. And since it is all Entity based, there are lots of ways it can be used in combination with the Rules module also.

For way more details about this module, refer to my answer to "http://drupal.stackexchange.com/questions/190003/how-to-only-allow-a-user-to-edit-his-her-own-users/190013#190013".

Apart from the previous (valid!) answer, I think there is another alternative to address at least this part of your question:

The idea is that all the publications lists should show a list of public documents to non-authenticated users, and a list of all documents to authenticated users of the right role.

The way I'd try to implement this, is to use the Group module for al documents targeted to authenticated users. For "public" documents you don't have to do anything I think. As per the "right role", that's a matter of creating the appropriate "groups" (like 1 for each role maybe?), and/or maybe even sub-groups that this module supports.

This module is like Organic groups "little brother", only started in D7 and with a D8 version at the horizon. Personally I'm more and more considering it as a potential alternative for the Content Access module also. And since it is all Entity based, there are lots of ways it can be used in combination with the Rules module also.

For way more details about this module, refer to my answer to "https://drupal.stackexchange.com/questions/190003/how-to-only-allow-a-user-to-edit-his-her-own-users/190013#190013".