OpenAthens is an identity and access management service, supplied by Jisc, a British not-for-profit information technology services company. Identity provider (IdP) organisations can keep usernames in the cloud, locally or both. Integration with ADFS, LDAP or SAML is supported.[1]

OpenAthens for Publishers[2] software for service providers supports multiple platforms and federations.

Technically, the service provides deep packet inspection proxying (in a similar manner to EZproxy) and SAML-based federation,[3] as well as various on-boarding services for institutions, consortia and vendors.

History

With its origins in a University of Bath initiative to reduce IT procurement costs for itself and other universities, the Athens project was conceived in 1996. Spun off from Bath University through the vehicle of charitable status, Eduserv was established as a not-for-profit organisation in 1999.[4]

The service was originally named Athena after the Greek goddess of knowledge and learning; it is rumoured that the name change was partially caused by a common typo, but it was actually due to the name Athena being already trademarked (EU000204735).[5] It launched as 'Athens' in 1997 (UK00002153200).[6] After JISC decided to support Shibboleth rather than Athens in 2008, Eduserv launched a federated version of Athens as 'OpenAthens'[7] (EU013713821).[8]

See also

References

  1. ↑ "SAML and interoperability". OpenAthens. 17 March 2016. Retrieved 23 May 2016.
  2. ↑ "OpenAthens for publishers". www.eduserv.org.uk. Retrieved 22 January 2016.
  3. ↑ "I am using a proxy, why do I need OpenAthens?".
  4. ↑ Clawson, Trevor. "The Sweet Spot -- Finding A Route To UK Public Sector Sales". Forbes. Retrieved 11 October 2023.
  5. ↑ "EU000204735". ipo.gov.uk. Intellectual Property Office. Retrieved 25 January 2016.
  6. ↑ "UK00002153200". ipo.gov.uk. Intellectual Property Office. Retrieved 25 January 2016.
  7. ↑ Upshall, Michael (2009). Content Licensing: Buying and Selling Digital Resources. Chandos. p. 102. ISBN 9781843343332. Retrieved 24 October 2021.
  8. ↑ "EU013713821". ipo.gov.uk. Intellectual Property Office. Retrieved 25 January 2016.
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