News

FedCM: July update on the efforts between the R&E community, the web community, and browser vendors This is an update following continuous meet-ups and other gatherings between representatives of the Research & Education (R&E) community and the browser vendors – discussing what capabilities in and around FedCM are required for our community to continue to serve academic users and their use cases. Background In a blog post titled “An emerging new technology for federated access: Federated Credential Management (FedCM)” and several later blog posts (most recent, previous), videos (one, two) and FAQs (for librarians and publishers), we discussed ongoing developments at the major browser vendors that are bound to have a significant impact on how users will experience the web in general, and on federated access in particular.

FedCM: An update on the efforts between the R&E community and browser vendors This is an update following a recent meet-up between representatives of the Research & Education (R&E) community and Mozilla and Google – discussing what capabilities in and around FedCM are required for our community to continue to serve academic users and their use cases. Note: SeamlessAccess is organizing a more in-depth webinar on this topic on April 6 - register here!

An emerging new technology for federated access: Federated Credential Management (FedCM) In earlier blog posts, videos (one, two) and FAQs (for librarians and publishers), we talked about ongoing developments at the major browser vendors that are bound to have a significant impact on how users will experience the web in general, and on federated access in particular. To recap, these changes are driven by concerns around user privacy - including regulations such as GDPR - and meant to stop the unsanctioned tracking of users across the web.

Contract Language Model License Agreement 1.0 The Contract Language Working Group is pleased to release the Federated Authentication Contract Language Model License Agreement 1.0. From the introduction: “Existing contract language between resource providers and libraries is almost universally focused on authentication and authorization via IP address. Reference to federated access is most often with language that refers to “secure networks”, and the authorization of users that are on said network to access resources.

The Challenges around Where-Are-You-From (WAYF) There are many ways to manage access to remote resources. From the use of IP addresses via VPN or proxy services to federated identity, the goal of enabling access to remote content is both easier and more complicated than ever before. A common element in federated access workflows is that, at some point in their journey, the user needs to select the institution they want to use to authorize their access.

Note: Going forward, we will be sending out this newsletter on a bimonthly schedule. Events Just before the summer period, SeamlessAccess was discussed in a number of events and conferences. In case you missed it, slides and recordings are available: “What’s new with SeamlessAccess?” webinar (May 24), hosted by the STM Association. A recording is available here. SeamlessAccess was one of the services discussed in the “Access and Assessment: Delivering Privacy Preserving Services” session at NASIG 2022 (June 7), a session that focused on protecting user privacy while delivering seamless user experiences.

Events We have several events coming up where you can learn more about SeamlessAccess and have an opportunity to interact with the team: “What’s new with SeamlessAccess?” webinar (May 24), hosted by the STM Association. Register here to learn more about SeamlessAccess, our roadmap, and experiences from Emerald Publishing, who have integrated SeamlessAccess onto their Emerald Insight platform last year. SeamlessAccess will be one of the services covered in the “Access and Assessment: Delivering Privacy Preserving Services” session at NASIG 2022 (June 7).

Maintenance April 19 Note: updated date! SeamlessAccess has scheduled maintenance on: April 19, 2022 8:00AM - 12:00PM UTC We have booked a four-hour maintenance window to upgrade SeamlessAccess to version 1.6.2. We expect that end-users will not experience any interruptions during this maintenance window, however it is possible that there may be some caching issues. Please refer to the SeamlessAccess status page for more details: https://status.seamlessaccess.org/ Update: Maintenance was succesfully completed

Maintenance SeamlessAccess has planned maintenance on: March 29, 2022 8:00AM - 12:00PM UTC We have booked a four-hour maintenance window to move the front-end service from GitHub Pages to a new infrastructure. The team will try to make sure that end-users won’t experience any issues during the maintenance, however it is possible that, at moments during this time window, the service is temporarily unavailable. Please refer to the SeamlessAccess status page for more details: https://status.

Model License Agreement Call for Comments We are pleased to announce the second output from the Contract Language Working Group, whose job it is to build on the Entity Category work to produce a toolkit for use in contracts between libraries and service providers (and for service providers to have as a reference for library requirements). This group is working to develop a toolkit that can be used to update contracts and documentation to help libraries and providers choose the appropriate entity category for the resource and outcomes they desire.