Symptoms

When a user has "read" rights in SP2013 and with "Publishing" is enabled on the site, a user can not view a list item. The smartforms opens, but does not load any information.

If you disable "Publishing" on the site, then the user with "read" rights can open the form just fine. Giving the user contribute rights gets around the issue. In this case, it is not viable.
 

Diagnoses

After some investigations, we found that things in SharePoint change a little when "publishing" is enabled. For a user to see the form, they will need "Browse Directory" (Or higher) permissions as well.
 

Resolution

To get around the issue, we gave the "Read" permission set, "Browse Directory" permissions as well.

To do that, please perform the following steps.
- Log into the site as your admin user.
- Go to "Site Settings" andgt "Site Permissions".
- Under the "Permissions" tab, click the "Permission Levels" button.
- Now click on the "Read" link. (We will now "edit" the "Read" permission level.)
- Under the "Permissions" andgt "Site Permission" section, select the "Browse Directories" checkbox.
- Scroll all the way to the bottom and hit the "Submit" button.

The ticket has been routed to the documentation team and this will be documented in a future build of K2.