Hi Peter, all,

That is not quite correct but what has happened is this: 1. 'sign in' link expects a user to want to 'sign in' as an individual 2. 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

Admittedly this has caused some grief (as a lot of folks testing do exactly that - they go to homepage and can only use 'sign in' button - and we're trying to solve it by providing an additional option via 'sign in' that would allow you to bypass registration.

We're changing a lot of logic at out end and we're not done yet.

Thanks, Meshna

Meshna Koren

Associate Product Manager Product Management - Identity and Platform - Research Products

Elsevier BV Radarweg 29, Amsterdam 1043 NX, The Netherlands m.koren@elsevier.com

Federated Access - SAML, Shibboleth, Corporate SSO, OpenAthens, Institutional Login

-----Original Message----- From: FIM4L fim4l-bounces@lists.daasi.de On Behalf Of Jiri Pavlik Sent: Wednesday, September 4, 2019 13:21 To: fim4l@lists.daasi.de Subject: Re: [Fim4l] Elsevier unilaterally shutting down pseudonymous access to institutionally licensed resources?

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Hi,

I can confirm that. I cannot sign in at Science Direct without providing e-mail address now.

Could you comment on that, Koren, please? Is Elsevier going to implement https://seamlessaccess.org/ and fim4l.org recommendations?

Best regards

Jiri

On Wed, Sep 4, 2019 at 12:28 PM Peter Schober peter.schober@univie.ac.at wrote:

• Peter Schober peter.schober@univie.ac.at [2019-09-04 11:57]:

...

in order to log I'm requested to register an account (even after having logged in successfully via my institution[1]) by providing an email address and, later on, also my full name:

Note that while there have been comments about Elsevier and manual registration on this list earlier this year those were all in the context of the subject herself wanting to make use of personalisation:

• Bernd Oberknapp bo@ub.uni-freiburg.de [2019-07-18 16:55]:

...

Elsevier forces users to register with their names and email addresses (and maybe also additional data), otherwise the personalized features cannot be used

• Koren, Meshna (ELS-AMS) M.Koren@elsevier.com [2019-07-18 22:18]:

...

We (Elsevier [...]) tie a targetedID to an 'Elsevier user account' which is created in our database when a user decides to 'activate personalization'

Whereas right now I'm prompted to disclose personal information to simply log in to the site[1], without requesting anything at all, esp not the activation of personalisation features?

-peter

[1] https://www.sciencedirect.com/ -> Sign in -> Sign in via your institution -> (log at inst. in and return) -> "Welcome. Enter your email to continue with ScienceDirect" / "Email is required". _______________________________________________ FIM4L mailing list FIM4L@lists.daasi.de http://lists.daasi.de/listinfo/fim4l

_______________________________________________ FIM4L mailing list FIM4L@lists.daasi.de http://lists.daasi.de/listinfo/fim4l

________________________________

Elsevier B.V. Registered Office: Radarweg 29, 1043 NX Amsterdam, The Netherlands, Registration No. 33156677, Registered in The Netherlands.

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:

1. '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. :-\

2. 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