News

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.

SeamlessAccess is a service designed to help streamline the online access experience for researchers using scholarly collaboration tools, information resources, and shared research infrastructure. This is the monthly update for March 2020 where we catch up on the latest activities within SeamlessAccess.org. SeamlessAccess in the News Lisa Janicke Hinchliffe (U. of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign) and Ralph Youngen (American Chemical Society) are the presenters of the next IAM Online webinar on 13 May 2020.

SeamlessAccess is a service designed to help streamline the online access experience for researchers using scholarly collaboration tools, information resources, and shared research infrastructure. This is the monthly update for March 2020 where we catch up on the latest activities within SeamlessAccess.org. SeamlessAccess in the News Choice, one of the publishing units at the Association of College & Research Libraries (a division of the American Library Association), released a series of podcasts last month on digital access to scholarly content.

SeamlessAccess is a service designed to help streamline the online access experience for researchers using scholarly collaboration tools, information resources, and shared research infrastructure. This is the monthly update for March 2020 where we catch up on the latest activities within SeamlessAccess.org. SeamlessAccess in the News Choice, one of the publishing units at the Association of College & Research Libraries (a division of the American Library Association), is releasing a series of podcasts this month on digital access to scholarly content.

SeamlessAccess intends to improve the way people from universities and colleges around the globe access content and services. To better understand the diverse situation in these institutions we have constructed two short surveys, available till March 27th 2020: One for people working in libraries in universities/colleges One for people working in IT in universities and colleges Please either fill out the survey or forward it to mailing lists, websites, or other forums followed by people working in academic libraries or IT.

SeamlessAccess.org is a service designed to help streamline the online access experience for researchers using scholarly collaboration tools, information resources, and shared research infrastructure. This is the monthly update for February 2020 where we catch up on the latest activities within SeamlessAccess.org. Upcoming Conference Sessions NISO Plus (February 23-25, 2020) Tim Lloyd (CEO, LibLynx) will offer an introduction to SeamlessAccess for those new to the service, and Ralph Youngen (Director, Publishing Systems Integration, American Chemical Society) and Lisa Hinchliffe (Professor, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign) will kick off a more in-depth conversation about SeamlessAccess and its implications in the research and library communities.

Following feedback before and during the Internet2 Technology Exchange, the Seamless Access program is reviewing the permissible use of the stored Identity Provider (IdP) preference information when using some of the SeamlessAccess.org integration models (see our “Getting Started” page for more information about the different integration models). What we realized is that in its current form, authorized Service Providers (SPs) using the advanced integration model may be able to access stored IdP choices before a user logs into that SP’s service.