Publishers, information professionals, and end-users all depend on the technology that underpins the dissemination of scholarly communication. These systems don’t exist in a bubble – the routes users take to content (and their expectations of when and where they will be able to access it) are evolving in lockstep with advances in hardware, and systems must be constantly refined and developed to keep up.
OpenAthens have recently made public the Publisher Manifesto – a document that contains a series of commitments, indicating how the company is supporting publishers in managing access to knowledge. These commitments include providing the best possible end-user experience, enabling single sign-on that is simple to set up and maintain within publishing platforms, and the use of common standards across SAML and other authentication protocols.
The Publisher Manifesto joins initiatives such as the Publisher Round Table and OpenAthens Customer Conference, and participation in projects such as Resource Access in the 21st Century, and shows how OpenAthens intends to keep working with stakeholders across the industry to ensure the technology that we all rely on continues to meet the needs of its users.
The OpenAthens Publisher Manifesto is available to download from the OpenAthens website:
http://openathens.org/openathens-publisher-manifesto/
If you would like to know more about how we work with OpenAthens to support access, please contact me