Universal login for universities
The WeNMR project has been established as part of the European 7th framework programme, and aims to create an international infrastructure for researchers working in the life sciences. The Dutch infrastructure of SURFconext allows people working in higher education institutions to access all kinds of services through one login code.
Together with two international partners, SURFconext helps researchers from various research institutes across Europe to use their own trusted institutional account to obtain single sign-on access to various services. For WeNMR administrators this approach offers the advantage to enroll users from abroad and validate their authenticity by re-using institutional credentials.
As this project illustrates, there is technology and infrastructure available to lower the access to shared resources while at the same time the burden of tedious account management by virtual research organization coordinators can be minimized.
In the Netherlands, the service to enable this was offered by SURFconext: the infrastructure allowing education and research institutions to connect with various participating service providers. Thanks to the eduGAIN infrastructure, this functionality is now available on an international scale.
Basic setup:
WeNMR (service provider, collaboration hub),
SURFconext and eduGAIN (middleware providers/co-ordinators)
Universities across Europe (identity providers, work in progress)
