...
InCommon is launching a new service to make it easier for participants to provide collaborative services; and for faculty, researchers, and scientists to use those services. The new Research & Scholarship (R&S) category will apply to service providers that support research and scholarship activities, like virtual organizations and campus-based collaborative services. Participating identity providers will agree to release a minimal set of attributes to the R&S category with a one-time addition to their default release policies, a simpler and more scalable approach than negotiating such release with every service provider.
...
All InCommon SPs are already bound by a set of practices governing how they manage and use personal attributes. InCommon's R&S Category defines additional set criteria that are designed to facilitate IdP policy decisions to release a controlled set of low-risk attributes to R&S SPs without local review for each SP. InCommon also provides metadata and technology tools to further facilitate automatic, but controlled, release of attributes to the R&S SPs, as well as aiding user support.
IDPs IdPs can simplify the management of their Attribute Release Policies by taking advantage of the R&S Category. With a one-time addition to their default release policies they can specify a set of attributes to release to all SPs that are in the R&S Category. This policy would apply to SPs that are added to the category in the future, without the IDP administrator having to make any changes.
...