There are many positives associated with being a first mover in a particular market space, such as market leadership, strengthened client relationships, customer loyalty, and an opportunity to leapfrog competitors. Unfortunately, however, moving first often ties one to legacy approaches toward certain processes, an issue that is true of scholarly publishers and the authentication systems that are widely deployed in the library and publishing communities.
Libraries and publishers moved quickly to provide their patrons access to subscribed content via IP-address-based authentication systems. This made sense in the early days of the Internet, when most users connected through desktop computers that were hard-wired to campus networks. In the mid-to-late 1990s, few people had home connectivity, and even fewer used mobile devices or laptops connected to a remote network. Since then, transformations in connectivity, institutional collaborations, and mobile computing have greatly enhanced and complicated the ways in which users access content. These complications mean that users experience subscriber access via IP-based protocols that are unreliable and error prone, for reasons unknown to the users.
When it works, the user experience and simplicity of IP-based authentication makes accessing content seamless and simple, but the system is also rife with problems. IP addresses are easily spoofed. Also, because the initial IP ranges were far too inadequate for the eventual demand, ranges overlap and are often used as proxies for broader communities than originally designed, making the network horribly insecure. Many nefarious attackers have taken advantage of these vulnerabilities to pirate significant amounts of publisher content.
We find ourselves in an environment where an outdated, inappropriate solution forms the basis for providing content to millions of users at tens of thousands of institutions. The entire situation is untenable (it probably has been for years) and we need to address the issue at a broad scale.
A number of initiatives to advance more robust technologies to improve access control have found varying levels of success over the years. Any success is often most dependent on local institutional infrastructure. Also, not every content provider is equally prepared to provide access via methods that are not IP-based. Similarly, not every institution can support these other authentication methods. Finally, the user education issue, meaning the task of informing patrons how to gain access via more robust methods, has gotten short shrift.
It is about time that libraries and publishers move beyond IP-based authentication. A related effort begun within the STM Association of publishers earlier this year is gaining momentum, and NISO has been engaged in these conversations and is supporting the initiative. Realizing that this work needs to be a broad-based community effort, we are helping to bring library and vendor voices into the conversation. Two community meetings are planned this December, with additional opportunities for engagement lined up as well. Discussions are underway to find means to enhance participation and explore reasonable approaches. This multi-year effort will require participation from a variety of community members. A survey has launched to gain insight into organizational capabilities and interest in this endeavor. If you're interested in helping in these efforts, please respond via the survey. The community will need to establish bridges between institutional IT and content providers and nurture better relationships between patrons and providers.
NISO is a terrific venue to bring many of these players together in a mutually supportive way to combat these new security challenges. The work will require a great deal of trust and collaboration; qualities NISO brings to the table. We will have our work cut out for us in the coming year.
With this ambitious agenda, I hope you all have a wonderful holiday season and a productive start to your new year!
We appreciate your feedback and input on these future directions for our Organization and for the information distribution ecosystem.
With kindest regards,
Todd Carpenter
Executive Director
NISO Reports
New and Proposed Specs and Standards
COUNTER Code of Practice Release 5 Update
Last month's Charleston Conference saw a presentation on the latest developments regarding Project COUNTER. These slides from the presentation outline the progress to date with drafting Release 5 of COUNTER, and include information on new reports, metric types and related attributes, report formats, sample use cases, and the project timeline.
Safer, Less Vulnerable Software Is the Goal of New NIST Computer Publication
The new NIST Interagency Report (NISTIR) 8151: Dramatically Reducing Software Vulnerabilities is based on the organization's work with coders in private industry and government agencies. The publication discusses strategies such as using the appropriate language for the task at hand and making programs modular so that if one part fails, it doesn't all crash. In addition, the authors offer ways for members of the programming community to educate themselves on these important techniques.
Media Stories
NISO Recommended Practice: Outputs of the Alternative Assessment Metrics Project
Journal of Collaborative Librarianship 8 (2016) Issue 3; by Jill O'Neill
This article by Jill O'Neill, NISO Educational Programs Manager, describes NISO's collaboratively produced Recommended Practice, NISO RP-25-2016, Outputs of the Alternative Assessment Metrics Project. This document "sought to establish a consensus among stakeholders whose activities require robust and precise tools for gauging the impact and reach of scholarship in a globally networked research environment-more robust than were available from impact factor and other such measures." O'Neill also considers next steps, including propelling related efforts and encouraging adoption of the recommended practices.
Ask The Chefs: Where Is The Balance Between Security, Authentication, Marketing, and Privacy?
Scholarly Kitchen, Dec. 1, 2016; by Ann Michael
MichaeI, herself a Scholarly Kitchen "Chef," or blogger, asks her fellow chefs David Smith, Joe Esposito, Rick Anderson, Michael Clarke, Todd Carpenter, Jill O'Neill, and Lettie Conrad to discuss the thorny issue of balancing the right to privacy with other important concerns.
Monographs, Transparency, and Open Access
The Scholarly Kitchen, December 5, 2016; by Jill O'Neill
NISO Educational Programs Manager Jill O'Neill finds that, despite some progress in the market, curiosity about a citation can still lead readers down an OA rabbit hole.
Partnering for Discoverability: Knitting Archival Finding Aids to Digitized Material Using a Low Tech Digital Content Linking Process
Code{4}Lib Journal, Issue 34, Oct. 25, 2016; by Liz Woolcott, Andrea Payant, Sara Skindelien
"As libraries continue to ramp up digitization efforts for unique archival and special collections material, the segregation of archival finding aids from their digitized counterparts presents an accumulating discoverability problem for both patrons and library staff. [Utah State University Libraries have created a process] for semi-automating the batch linking of item and folder level entries in EAD finding aids to the corresponding digitized material in CONTENTdm."
Invitation to Tender: A Feasibility Study on Monographs
Research Libraries UK (RLUK). Oct. 19, 2016.
"As libraries continue to ramp up digitization efforts for unique archival and special collections material, the segregation of archival finding aids from their digitized counterparts presents an accumulating discoverability problem for both patrons and library staff. [Utah State University Libraries have created a process] for semi-automating the batch linking of item and folder level entries in EAD finding aids to the corresponding digitized material in CONTENTdm."
Is Open Access Enough? Strategies for Healthier OA
ACRLog, November 12, 2016; by Dylan Burns
Burns maintains that predatory journals and publishers benefit from faculty and librarian enthusiasm about open access, while at the same time, even quality OA materials are viewed with suspicion by some in the academy because of concerns with the accuracy of Internet material. He offers librarians some solutions to both problems, providing a way to strengthen OA as a movement as well as improve the materials that OA journals publish.
A PLOS Response to Open in Action with Open Science
The Official PLOS Blog, November 4, 2016 by Sheryl P. Denker
"With the theme of Open in Action, International Open Access Week 2016 served as a call for researchers, policymakers, funders and publishers around the globe to take 'concrete steps to open up research and scholarship.' In direct response to this call, PLOS thought carefully about Open Science and what it means for us."
The Internet Archive is Building a Canadian Copy
Internet Archive Blogs, November 29, 2016; by Brewster Kahle
"On November 9th in America," says Internet Archive founder Brewster Kahle, "we woke up to a new administration promising radical change. It was a firm reminder that institutions like ours, built for the long-term, need to design for change. For us, it means keeping our cultural materials safe, private and perpetually accessible. It means preparing for a Web that may face greater restrictions." The Archive is therefore building a copy of itself in Canada, with this blog entry soliciting donations for the millions of dollars that undertaking will cost.
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