News

SeamlessAccess is a service designed to help streamline the online access experience for researchers using scholarly collaboration tools, information resources, and shared research infrastructure. We’re back from a short hiatus in newsletter writing, and the last few months have seen quite a bit of work happening within SeamlessAccess and in the broader federated identity community! We’re excited to bring you up to date on the latest news. Upcoming Events The NISO Plus conference will be a wholly online event this year from February 22-25, and SeamlessAccess is on the agenda!

Lead UX Designer & Strategist (part time) SeamlessAccessLead UX Designer & Strategist – estimated .25 FTE for 6-12 months; Location: remote SeamlessAccess seeks a strategically minded senior UX practitioner familiar with UX research and design activities to continue the evolution and adoption of SeamlessAccess services among a range of groups and organizations that support the research and education community. SeamlessAccess is actively collaborating with service providers who are implementing the service’s persistence service and/or central identity provider discovery service in a Beta Phase.

SeamlessAccess is a service designed to help streamline the online access experience for researchers using scholarly collaboration tools, information resources, and shared research infrastructure. The last two months had quite a bit of work happening behind the scenes, and we’re excited about bringing you up to date on the latest activities within SeamlessAccess. Welcome, Wiley Online Library Wiley Online Library, through their platform provider Atypon, is the newest implementer of SeamlessAccess.

SeamlessAccess is a service designed to help streamline the online access experience for researchers using scholarly collaboration tools, information resources, and shared research infrastructure. The last two months had quite a bit of work happening behind the scenes, and we’re excited about bringing you up to date on the latest activities within SeamlessAccess. Welcome, ScienceDirect Since our last newsletter, Elsevier has implemented SeamlessAccess in its ScienceDirect journal. See our announcement: https://seamlessaccess.

ScienceDirect integrates SeamlessAccess to provide improved remote access options for researchers We are happy to announce that ScienceDirect, Elsevier’s large platform of peer-reviewed scholarly literature, is the latest service provider to go live with SeamlessAccess. Researchers will now see the SeamlessAccess ‘Access through your institution’ button clearly marked on ScienceDirect article pages. When they click on the button, if their institution has an authorized subscription to ScienceDirect, they are authenticated by their institution and can use ScienceDirect services in the usual way.

Outreach Survey A report on the results of the recent surveys of academic IT and library staff to better understand the issues around the implementation of federated authentication is now available: https://seamlessaccess.org/posts/2020-06-23-surveyresults/. ORCID SeamlessAccess recently announced the extension of its beta phase at least through the end of this calendar year. ORCID, one of the founding partners of the SeamlessAccess coalition, is currently focusing its efforts on improving core services and adding value to its stakeholders whilst it is in the process of seeking a new Executive Director to lead the next stage of the organization’s development.

In order to encourage the clear and consistent operation of federated authentication between Service Providers (such as scholarly publishers), Identity Providers (such as campus IT administrators), and other stakeholder groups (such as librarians), the SeamlessAccess Entity Categories and Attribute Bundles Working Group has proposed three specifications that aim to provide a common set of terms and definitions for use when describing exactly what information should be requested by the Service Provider as well as what should be released (if any) by the institution to enable access to online materials.

The SeamlessAccess Outreach Committee recently conducted surveys of academic IT and library staff to better understand the issues around implementation of federated authentication. The overall results indicate that there is room for improvement in the communications between academic libraries and their institutional IT departments. While the surveys were developed to inform our outreach activities, we believe the results will be of interest to the wider community and are sharing our findings.

We’re excited to announce the publication of the first in a series of videos designed to support learning and education around the SeamlessAccess service. A key part of our mission is to improve understanding of the technologies that support our SeamlessAccess experience. To date, a significant proportion of our outreach activity has been in-person presentations at meetings and conferences. Given the current circumstances, and our desire to engage audiences that don’t have access to the same opportunities, we are developing a series of educational videos.

Extension of the Beta Phase With so many communities learning new ways to function, the governance committee for SeamlessAccess has made the decision to extend the beta period for SeamlessAccess through at least the end of this calendar year. This will allow us to continue to consult with our stakeholder communities on what’s working, and what isn’t, before we announce this as a full production service. Learning Videos The SeamlessAccess Outreach Committee has kicked off a video series designed to explain some of the details of federated identity to the world.