OpenAthens Ideas Portal

We're always looking for ways to improve our products, and we'd love your input to help us make that happen. Your suggestions will guide us in deciding where we should focus our future research and development.

Just sign in with your email to share your thoughts or vote for ideas you like—it'll help them get noticed!


Here’s how the portal is organised:

  • Librarians (Identity Providers): Share ideas that help organisations that manage user identities and provide access to online content and services. This includes improving the experience for students and researchers.

  • Publishers (Service Providers): Share ideas for organisations that offer content and services.


Guidance on using this portal

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Status Feedback wanted
Workspace Librarians
Categories User accounts and permission sets
Created by Guest
Created on Mar 28, 2025

RELATED IDEAS

Request to make First Name and Last Name non-mandatory for Bulk Upload

Currently, when we bulk upload personal accounts in the OpenAthens admin, both First Name and Last Name are mandatory. In some cases, it is difficult to export users' forenames and surnames separately.

If either First Name or Last Name (or both) can be optional, it would give librarians more flexibility in managing bulk uploads.

Is this currently impacting your ability to use OpenAthens effectively? Yes
Idea type Ease of use of specific or groups of tasks/actions
  • Attach files
  • Guest
    Apr 11, 2025

    Agreed. See https://shinesolutions.com/2018/01/08/falsehoods-programmers-believe-about-names-with-examples/

    Reply
  • Guest
    Apr 10, 2025

    I second this request. Some cultures/countries do not use last names (e.g. parts of India and Indonesia). "First Name" and "Last Name" should not be mandatory for OpenAthens personal accounts. It should not be a mandatory no matter how the account is created (bulk upload, self-registration, API or via admin).

    "First Name" and "Last Name" are not mandatory for Local Authentication accounts.

    Personal accounts require a unique email address to activate the account. However, the library should decide what (if any) other attributes are required to support users OR verify that they are entitled to access.



    Reply