Resource Access for the 21st Century (RA21): Simple, Trusted Access – Anywhere, Anytime, on Any Device

Publishers, libraries, and consumers have all come to the understanding that authorizing access to content based on IP address no longer works in today’s distributed world. The RA21 project hopes to resolve some of the fundamental issues that create barriers to moving to federated identity in place of IP address authentication by looking at some of the products and services available in the identity discovery space today, and determining best practice for future implementations going forward. 

RA21 conducted three pilots, one corporate and two academic, that explored potential technologies that would enable these steps, and reviewed the user experience, security, and privacy characteristics of each technology.

With the conclusion of the pilot evaluation, the remaining work of the project focuses on polishing the recommendations for the user experience, writing up the best practices and submitting them to NISO for public comment and publication, and establishing the governance of a future service that would build on RA21 guidelines.