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.org/sciencedirect-integrates-seamlessaccess-to-provide-improved-remote-access-options-for-researchers

SeamlessAccess v1.3 – New Features!

On 8 September, SeamlessAccess rolled out a new feature for the Identity Provider (IdP) discovery service that supports a user’s choice for allowing SeamlessAccess to store their choice of IdP in their browser. This feature is available by default in the Standard and Limited integrations, and must be implemented directly by the Service Provider (SP) for the Advanced integration.

Upcoming Webinar

Two industry initiatives focused on improving access to scholarly information, SeamlessAccess and GetFTR, have made much progress this year, seeing uptake from major publishers and platforms and growing usage.

Providing streamlined, easy-to-use access to remote users is now even more important due to the global pandemic.

Come hear about the latest developments from both initiatives. Atypon has recently released support for both initiatives on their platform and will be discussing their experience with the projects, as well as providing practical advice on how to activate these features if you use their platform.

Registration is free: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/implementing-seamless-access-and-getftr-a-free-webinar-from-stm-tickets-118367102189

Consultation Period – Entity Categories

The consultation period for the three proposed entity categories closed on 31 August 2020. Originally announced on 6 July 2020, the consultation process included several webinars geared towards a variety of stakeholder groups. A recording of the NISO webinar, geared towards librarians and publishers, is available on the NISO website: https://www.niso.org/events/2020/08/seamless-access-presents-entity-categories-and-attribute-bundles

The next step for these entity categories falls to REFEDS, the home for entity categories like these. The REFEDS Schema Editorial Board will consider the comments received and determine what, if any, any revisions and approvals are required.

More information on the proposed entity categories can be found on our blog post: https://seamlessaccess.org/public-comments-now-open-for-new-federated-identity-entity-categories

Community Engagement

The Contract Language Working Group kicked off in August with twenty participants from around the world and across different sectors. The goal of this group is to define and promote language that may be used in contracts that include provisions for Federated Access. Outputs from this group will be shared publicly. Stay tuned for more information!

Monitoring the Services

The availability of the SeamlessAccess services is publicly viewable at https://status.seamlessaccess.org. You can sign up for alerts for outages or to be notified when software updates are made to the services.

SeamlessAccess.org is a service, governed as a coalition between four organizations: GÉANT, Internet2, the National Information Standards Organization (NISO), and the International Association of STM Publishers. Participants include researchers, service providers, libraries and identity providers and federation operators, vendors, publishers.