Problem statement

Federated identity is widely deployed across research and education and serves as foundational infrastructure for many mission-critical workflows. Yet licensed scholarly resource access remains heavily dependent on IP-based access models despite the broad availability of federation infrastructure to academic libraries and publishers.

This initiative seeks to address a persistent adoption gap. Among libraries and publishers already participating in research and education identity federations, active adoption and use have not followed availability at the scale many stakeholders expected.

Current evidence suggests the challenge is not primarily technical. Libraries, institutional IAM organizations, publishers, service providers, and federations often operate under different priorities, incentives, and constraints. As a result, barriers to broader adoption are frequently operational rather than technical.

At the same time, libraries face growing challenges ensuring that users can consistently access licensed resources. Researchers increasingly discover content through search engines, AI-enabled research tools, and other open-web pathways, while IP-based access was designed for a different era of scholarly discovery. This disconnect between researcher discovery and successful access adds new urgency to a longstanding adoption challenge.

The opportunity is not to determine whether federated access is possible, but to understand what continues to limit consistent adoption. The goal is a practical, achievable approach that identity providers and service providers can implement consistently, while giving libraries greater trust that federated access can meet their operational needs and requirements.

Why Now?

Over the past decade, libraries, federations, publishers, service providers, and community organizations have made significant progress advancing federated access for scholarly resources and establishing many of the foundations needed to support broader adoption. This initiative builds upon the contributions of initiatives such as ESPReSSO, Research Access in the 21st Century (RA21), and its production deployment service SeamlessAccess, and related community initiatives such as Shibboleth and FIM4L.

The remaining challenges span multiple stakeholder groups and require collaboration. Discussions leading up to, during, and following GÉANT’s TNC 2026 conference reinforced broad recognition that advancing federated access for scholarly resources requires a clear, practical, and broadly implementable approach developed across libraries, institutional IAM organizations, federations, publishers, and service providers.

This initiative provides a structured forum for those communities to better understand the factors limiting adoption, identify practical approaches to addressing them, and validate those approaches through real-world implementation.

Mission

Develop a shared, evidence-based understanding of what libraries and publishers need from federated identity to support licensed scholarly resource access; evaluate how those needs align with existing federation capabilities; and collaboratively develop, validate, and promote a practical approach to implementation that addresses identified gaps, simplifies adoption, and builds trust that federated access can meet library needs.

Objectives & Key Results

Objective 1: Establish a representative cross-sector coalition.

Key Results

• Engage at least 4 federations and NRENs.
• Engage at least 8 library/consortial and institutional IAM pairs.
• Engage at least 5 publishers, aggregators, or service providers.
• Establish a Steering Committee with representation from all stakeholder communities.

Objective 2: Develop a shared, evidence-based understanding of the factors influencing federated identity adoption for licensed scholarly resource access.

Key Results

• Gather evidence and perspectives from all participating stakeholder communities.
• Map validated community needs to existing federation capabilities and identify implementation gaps.
• Determine which capabilities and implementation practices are essential, beneficial, or unnecessary to support library use cases for federated identity.
• With findings from the above activities, generate an Adoption Assessment and Gap Analysis Report.

Objective 3: Reach cross-sector consensus on a practical, consistent approach to addressing the identified gaps.

Key Results

• Develop community-supported implementation recommendations and supporting resources.
• Conduct cross-sector review and build documented consensus around the initiative’s recommendations.
• Identify implementation approaches for pilot validation.
• Develop community-focused change management artifacts to support subsequent uptake.

Objective 4: Validate recommended approaches through real-world pilots.

Key Results

• Define the pilot strategy, including the number and types of pilot implementations, participating organizations, and success measures, based on the outcomes of the discovery and design phases.
• Recruit participating organizations aligned with the pilot strategy.
• Conduct the planned pilot implementations and evaluate outcomes.
• Incorporate pilot findings into the initiative’s final recommendations and implementation resources.

Objective 5: Publish implementation recommendations and resources to support broader adoption.

Key Results

• Publish the initiative’s final recommendations and implementation resources.
• Document remaining gaps and recommended refinements based on pilot outcomes.
• If no further refinement is planned, secure expressions of interest from at least 25 organizations to evaluate or adopt the recommendations
• Present findings through at least 5 major community forums, conferences, or standards organizations.

Scope

In Scope

Participants

• Academic libraries at institutions already participating in identity federations but underutilising federated identity capabilities.
• Institutional IAM teams supporting those libraries
• National R&E federations, including those supported NRENs or operating independently
• Publishers, aggregators, and service providers that already support federation
• Business, policy, privacy, operational, and technical stakeholders involved in scholarly resource access

Activities

• Collection and analysis of quantitative and qualitative adoption data
• Identification of library, publisher, federation, and institutional IAM needs, constraints, incentives, information needs, and operational requirements
• Gap analysis between validated community needs and existing federation capabilities
• Development of community-supported implementation recommendations
• Pilot implementations and validation activities
• Measurement frameworks and success criteria

Out of Scope

• Creation of new federation standards
• Expansion of federation infrastructure into non-federated environments
• Replacement of other existing access methods
• Product-specific commercial implementations
• Long-term operational governance beyond the scope of this initiative
• Content licensing

Guiding Principles

Discovery before design

The initiative intentionally separates understanding the problem from designing solutions. Discovery will provide the evidence needed to shape the detailed deliverables and success measures of the Design and Pilot phases, rather than defining those outcomes in advance.

Include the communities affected by the outcome

Recommendations should be developed with active participation from the communities expected to implement, support, and rely upon them, including libraries, institutional IAM organizations, federations, publishers, and service providers. Broad participation is essential to ensuring that outcomes are practical, representative, and broadly adoptable.

Build on existing capabilities

The initiative will prioritize leveraging existing federation standards, trust frameworks, implementation patterns, and operational practices wherever they adequately address validated community needs. Where gaps remain, the initiative may recommend refinements, simplified implementation approaches, or other practical measures appropriate to the identified need.

Prioritize practical adoption

Success will be measured not by the publication of reports or technical artifacts alone, but by whether the initiative produces recommendations that participating organizations can realistically implement, operate, and sustain. Practicality will be evaluated through cross-sector review and, where appropriate, real-world pilots using success measures developed from the findings of Discovery and Design.

Governance

The initiative will be guided by a cross-sector Steering Committee with representation from:

• Libraries
• Institutional IAM organizations
• Federations and NRENs
• Publishers, aggregators, and service providers
• Relevant community and standards organizations

The Steering Committee will provide strategic direction, help ensure balanced representation across stakeholder communities, review major deliverables, and determine priorities and progression of the initiative based on the evidence and recommendations produced.

Day-to-day delivery will be led by a program lead working with the Steering Committee. The program lead will develop and coordinate the work within each phase, support stakeholder engagement and evidence gathering, synthesize findings, manage communications and dependencies, and bring recommendations and decisions back to the Steering Committee.

To support delivery, time-bound working groups may work alongside the program lead where additional cross-sector expertise or concentrated effort is needed. Their composition, scope, and duration will be determined by the work required rather than established as permanent governance structures.

Participation expectations will vary by role. Steering Committee members will provide continuity throughout the initiative, while other participants may contribute to specific activities or phases based on their expertise, interests, and capacity. Organizations are not expected to participate in every phase of the initiative.

For the initial phase of this project, the representation on the Steering Committee is expected to include: 3 Academic Library/Library Consortia representatives; 2 Academic IAM managers (ideally partnered with library reps from their institution); 2 Publisher/Service Provider representatives; and 2 NREN/federation representatives. Additionally, the Steering Committee is expected to include 2 non-voting liaisons to ensure connection with other organizations with relevant expertise in federated access management.

The composition of the Steering Committee will be reviewed as the project moves into Phase 2, and membership on the Steering Committee may be adjusted at that time based on project requirements as they develop.

Work Plan

The phases below describe the anticipated progression of the initiative. Phase 1 Discovery is a sequence dependency for the work that follows: its findings will inform the detailed scope, priorities, deliverables, participants, and success metrics for subsequent phases.

The purpose of each phase is defined here, and the work undertaken within those phases will be refined as the evidence base develops and with Steering Committee guidance.

Phase 1: Evidence gathering and gap analysis

Objective:

Develop a shared, evidence-based understanding of current adoption patterns, community needs, implementation practices, and existing federation capabilities. Identify where gaps exist between community needs and today’s federated identity ecosystem.

Activities:

• Gather and analyze existing and newly collected quantitative and qualitative evidence
• Organize a Working Group to support Discovery work by managing stakeholder engagement and evidence gathering, as well as helping to synthesize findings
• Leverage relevant existing research, community initiatives, events, and stakeholder forums where appropriate
• Conduct targeted stakeholder interviews, workshops, and other discovery activities
• Identify community needs and implementation gaps
• Map validated needs to existing federation capabilities
• Publish an Adoption Assessment and Gap Analysis Report

Transition to Phase 2:

The Steering Committee will review the Discovery findings and determine the scope and priorities for Phase 2 implementation. At that point, the Committee may also adjust its composition if additional expertise or sector representation would benefit the work planned for the next phase.

Phase 2: Implementation design and consensus

Objective:

Based on the findings of Phase 1, develop practical implementation recommendations and supporting artifacts to address the identified gaps.

Activities:

• Prioritize findings from Phase 1
• Develop implementation recommendations and supporting artifacts
• Validate recommendations through cross-sector review
• Define the approaches to be validated through pilots and the appropriate success measures

Transition to Phase 3:

The Steering Committee will review the proposed recommendations and determine which implementation approaches should advance to pilot validation.

Phase 3: Pilot implementation and validation

Objective:

Validate the practicality and effectiveness of the recommended implementation approaches through real-world deployments.

Activities:

• Coordinate pilot implementations across participating organizations
• Evaluate pilots against the success measures defined during the design phase, including implementation effort, operational feasibility, and effectiveness in addressing identified needs
• Document lessons learned and refine recommendations

Transition to Phase 4:

The Steering Committee will review pilot findings and determine which recommendations and implementation artifacts are ready for publication.

Phase 4: Publication and adoption

Objective:

Publish the initiative’s findings and implementation recommendations to support broader community adoption.

Activities:

• Publish final reports, recommendations, and implementation resources
• Present findings through participating communities and standards organizations
• Encourage adoption through outreach and community engagement

Duration

This initiative is intended as a focused, approximately two-year effort.

Its purpose is to establish a validated, community-supported baseline for federated scholarly resource access, demonstrate the feasibility of recommended approaches through real-world implementation where appropriate, and provide a foundation for future adoption activities.

Throughout the initiative, progress, findings, and opportunities for community input will be communicated at regular intervals through appropriate channels, which may include written updates, community meetings, webinars, conference sessions, or other forums. These updates will support transparency, accountability, continued engagement, and opportunities to adjust priorities as the work progresses.

Any future governance structures, standards work, or long-term adoption programs will be considered separately based on the outcomes of this effort.