Thanks for chiming in, Meshna.
* Koren, Meshna (ELS-AMS) M.Koren@elsevier.com [2019-09-04 15:00]:
That is not quite correct but what has happened is this:
- 'sign in' link expects a user to want to 'sign in' as an individual
I agree that this is far from obvious. You're essentially changing the meaning of "sign in" only for your site. I guess if you're following other conventions -- such as the upcoming Seamless Access one already mentioned by Jiří -- that may be workable. Otherwise I'd expect more grief to be coming your way. :-\
- if you find an article that your institution doesn't subscribe
to, you will also see 'check access' button and signing in via your IdP that way will allow you to sign in as anonymous institutional user
For the purpose of federated logins (or always when I'm off-campus) it's unkown what my institution subscribes to before I log in (as the institution itself is unknown before I log in) but you're saying above that accessing non-Open Access content directly will provide me with a different button that enables me to log in via my institution in the process?
Searching for random articles on https://www.sciencedirect.com/ I can confirm that it indeed works this way, by -- after clicking away the popup/overlay asking me to register -- following a "Get Access" link with a PDF symbol at the top of the article page (ignoring any "Purchase PDF" links with PDF symbols on the right-hand side, for other content), again ignoring the "Purchase PDF" link on the popup/overlay and following the "Check Access" link instead. Then I sign in via my institution and click "Continue without registering" on return -- which I suppose I will have to do every singe time I log in to Elsevier now (as hinted at in the statement that registering now would save time in the future).
So still is possible to access licensed, protected content without registering a personalised accounts, though in all honestly you've made it as difficult and unlikely as possible to continue use of your site without registering.
We're changing a lot of logic at out end and we're not done yet.
Thanks for sharing. When confronted with a given UI/UX on a production system in global use I cannot simply assume that it's still a work in progress -- I have to consider it final (as much as anything is "final" in online services) if it's "live".
Thanks again for clearing up my misunderstanding, -peter