Analysis and news
Twenty-five years on – enabling access to knowledge As OpenAthens celebrates its 25th anniversary, Jon Bentley discusses the organisation’s growth, industry changes and what to expect in the future
OpenAthens is marking its milestone birthday with a range of celebratory activities over the coming months which will recognise the contribution of its staff, customers and partners. The UK-based not-for-profit is now a market-leading global access management organisation. Employing 53 staff from its head office, its technology is used by more than 2,600 organisations across multiple sectors, in more than 70 countries. In its early years, OpenAthens was one of the first organisations to provide electronic access to library databases. The team working on the project spotted its potential for use by other educational institutions. In a few years, it had been adopted by universities across the UK. Our aim back then still stands today – we want to make access to knowledge as simple as possible. But 25 years later we are still facing some of the same challenges. We must ask ourselves, as an industry, what is stopping us from consistently delivering access management solutions that are simple and coherent for our end- users?
Technology Single sign-on technology has evolved significantly since our software was first developed in 1995 at the University of Bath to provide access to the National Information Services and Systems and Bath Information and Data Service. Over the past 25 years, access to
knowledge, and the technology used in the sector has advanced and benefited those who need quick access to journals and knowledge resources. Different access technologies of varying technical capability were developed. For many years, IP-proxy was the access method of choice, because it just about works for remote access if most of your learners are on campus. Similar to a Bic biro pen that does not do much more than provide ink to write with, proxy access provides the basics, but does not solve today’s complex access issues. Yes it’s a low-cost option, but at what cost? There are known security
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issues around the use of IP-based access, and with more people now working or studying from home, it’s also not a sustainable or scalable option. During the pandemic we have heard many reports of proxy-based access falling over because the underlying infrastructure could not meet the growing demand for remote access. The problem we face now is that
if organisations continue to use this outdated access method, they will fall behind. Proxy access is simply not reliable enough for how organisations will operate going forward. Single sign-on technology has
advanced rapidly and is slowly but surely replacing IP and proxy-based access. And while the technology and the publishing and library sectors have undergone massive changes over the last couple of
“ Proxy access provides the basics, but does not solve today’s complex access issues”
decades, the basic goals remain the same. We remain dedicated to removing
barriers to knowledge and creating access to quality content for as many people as possible, while protecting that same content from misuse. Our technology offers a better user experience, security, and insight into analytics that is compliant with privacy laws and ethics around data use. What we have learned over the past 25 years is that the deployment and delivery of this technology must continually improve to meet the future needs of our customers, and to integrate with the other standards-based systems and processes they engage with. This will enable everyone to use federated single sign-on technology consistently. The Financial Times migration from
old to new technology is a case in point, where there were no reports of disruption to end users. Work to upgrade to our new Keystone product was completed ahead
of time because the Financial Times were starting to see a big increase in remote logins due to the Covid-19 pandemic. But it’s not enough just to innovate,
agility is important too. Again, there are many reports of organisations failing during the pandemic because they could not adapt and change quickly enough. Over the past 25 years we’ve supported many organisations by deploying our federated single sign-on technology. The University of Melbourne and Museum of London are just two of the library organisations we set up during the pandemic in super-quick time, enabling their staff, researchers and learners to get quick and easy access to content. With a second wave of Covid-19 looming, our work to extend access for NHS staff working at the Nightingale hospitals, and our collaboration with QxMD will almost certainly come in handy. There are so many innovative
organisations and educational establishments which we have done some amazing work with. One in particular is Emerald Insight, the winners of our 2020 Best publisher UX award. Founded in the UK in 1967, Emerald Publishing clearly demonstrated how it had worked to get closer to users to understand their needs and user journey. Emerald Insight’s design makes research that benefits society easy to discover for the widest possible audience. Co-developed with 18 universities from around the world, the uniquely tailored platform is invaluable for academics, librarians and students alike. Emerald’s communities tested and validated every design decision to make researchers’ and readers’ lives easier. The publisher is a fantastic example of how our technology can be used to enhance the end-user’s experience and ease access to knowledge.
Language The language to describe our technology has evolved at the same pace as our technology advancements. However, we have discovered that our language is not always consistent and can sometimes confuse end-users, and even those who work in the industry.
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