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.
They are referring to the "Choose how to sign in" page that displays when a site has multiple login options. I've attached a screenshot from a different library for reference.
Some libraries allow the majority of users to log in using a SAML connector. However, they could have a smaller group of users that log in with OpenAthens personal accounts. We recommend enabling the "Choose how to sign in" screen where there are multiple user directories. The main benefit is all users can log into OpenAthens from any point of need (library website, publisher website, etc). However, it adds an additional click. The browser remembers the selection. However, all first-time users must choose how to sign in. Users may frequently 'choose how to sign in' if they use multiple devices, browsers or regularly clear their cookies.
If the secondary user group is small, some libraries may prefer to set up a separate user portal with a different login page. Right now, the main workaround is to log in via MyAthens: https://docs.openathens.net/libraries/how-to-log-in-with-an-openathens-account-when-your
MyAthens (https://my.openathens.net) has a generic OpenAthens branded login page. Here users can log in with a personal account. However, the authentication point will not include any institutional branding or any other unique domain settings such as a point of need link to the client's registration form. If the user searches for their institution, they will be sent to the connector login page.
Alternatively, libraries can build their own OpenAthens login page on a library hosted website (if they have API expertise). Example: https://docs.openathens.net/libraries/how-to-put-an-openathens-sign-in-on-your-portal
The latter is not possible for all libraries. Ideally, it would be great if libraries could add a parameter to a link to specify a specific login option (or the standard authenticaton point) without needing to make that option the 'default' on their domain.
Force non-default connector login option (include the client's entityID + the desired connector ID):
https://my.openathens.net/auth?entityID=X&connector=12345
OR
Force OpenAthens personal account login (include the client's EntityID and "none" so the standard authentication point display with their institution's domain branding).
https://my.openathens.net/auth?entityID=X&connector=none
We receive similar requests for adding a parameter to Redirector links i.e. force a non-default login option with a URL parameter.
The authentication point remembers a user's choice, so most users would see the additional option very rarely and maybe only once. You can label them to help users choose correctly.
The workaround is to have the OpenAthens account holders sign in at MyAthens first - there is an option to sign in with an OpenAthens account directly (https://my.openathens.net)
I can't give a screenshot bc I would have to activate the Open Athens login to do so. We don't use that so I need a place for guest accounts to login.