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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Accessing resources

Customizable authentication page branding (HTML editor - more flexible CSS branding)

Provide more flexible out-of-the-box branding customization for the authentication point (similar to EZProxy), ideally via a HTML editor or support for uploaded CSS/HTML files. At a minimum, libraries should be able to replace all the English text...
6 months ago in Librarians / Accessing resources / Documentation / Org discovery (Wayfinder) Feedback wanted

Filter to allow user list to be filtered to users who failed to login at last attempt

This allows troubleshooting of login failures - should also allow combining with sorting by last sign in column. Troubleshooting a mapping issue last week would have been much easier with this!
27 days ago in Librarians / Accessing resources / Overall usability  / Search and navigation Feedback wanted

Allow libraries to set a Redirector "link path" (WAYFLess deep-link syntax) for Custom SAML resources

CURRENT FUNCTIONALITY: In the OpenAthens resource catalogue redirector settings include: redirectable flags, target domains and link path(s). These settings are managed centrally by JISC and/or the federated Service Provider. Only federated OR pro...
6 months ago in Librarians / Accessing resources / Org discovery (Wayfinder) / Redirector Feedback wanted

Managing credentials for non-compatible resources within OpenAthens

With a large number of platforms and resources that remain incompatible with OpenAthens, managing their credentials separately in external systems has become an increasingly complex and time-consuming task for organizations. Given OpenAthens' role...
over 1 year ago in Librarians / Accessing resources / Proxy Research & discovery

Improve support for DOI links within the OpenAthens Redirector

We have been having issues linking to content from Sage vis the OpenAthens Redirector. This is due to the OpenAthens Redirector not honouring the URL registered against the DOI reference (e.g. As an example you can use the Crossref API to look at ...
over 1 year ago in Librarians / Accessing resources / Redirector Research & discovery

Redirector "domain bypass" - let admins whitelist target domains where authentication isn't required (equivalent to EZProxy's NeverProxy or RedirectSafe functionality)

ENHANCEMENT REQUEST Add a 'Domain Bypass' OR "Domain Whitelist" to the Preferences --> Redirector section of OA admin BUSINESS NEED: Redirector links must have some local flexibility to improve the compatibility with third-party library systems...
6 months ago in Librarians / Accessing resources / Redirector Feedback wanted

Request to support non-standard ports (e.g. 8080) on the proxy.

Currently the OpenAthens proxy supports only standard HTTP/HTTPS ports (80 and 443). Some customers have locally hosted resources running on non-standard ports, for example http://www.domain.com:8080, which cannot be supported yet.
30 days ago in Librarians / Accessing resources / Proxy Feedback wanted

Localise the User Interfaces (support translation to multiple languages, date formats, time zones)

Please add support to localise the user interfaces (support translation to multiple languages, date formats, time zones). Key interfaces: Authentication point - personal account and brokered logins (not including delegated connector) MyAthens+...
6 months ago in Librarians / Accessing resources / Library/web portal / MyAthens / Org discovery (Wayfinder) / Overall usability Feedback wanted

Allow OpenAthens to dynamically apply Permission Sets based on a user's access location (on-campus or off-campus network).

Many institutions manage electronic resource access under licence agreements that distinguish between on-campus and off-campus use. At our institution, some user groups are permitted to access only a subset of resources remotely, while additional ...
about 1 month ago in Librarians / Accessing resources / Attribute release / User accounts and permission sets Feedback wanted

OA Redirector: Allow access mechanism selection.

We use OpenAthens and the OpenAthens Proxy.The Redirector will always use Federated access whenever it's available. Some resources do not work well with Federated access, which is why we Proxy them.e.g. Some do not allow deep linking through their...
over 1 year ago in Librarians / Accessing resources / Proxy / Redirector Research & discovery