What is Research and Scholarship category?

The Research and Scholarship (R&S) entity category defines a simple and scalable way to streamline federated research, scholarship, and collaboration access. Identity Providers (IdPs) agree to release basic, pre-defined person directory information to all service providers (SP) in the category.

Institutions who configure their IdP to support R&S realize the following benefits:

• Convenience: faculty and researchers instantly access participating services using campus credentials without administrator involvement
• Collaboration on-demand: when a research project adds a service to the category, collaboration across participating campuses is immediate
• Vetted services: InCommon or a sister federation reviews each service application for adherence to the category definition and requirements
• Save time and resources: once enabled, there is no additional involvement of IT staff to provision new R&S services

InCommon has partnered with its peer research and education federations worldwide to create the REFEDS Research and Scholarship entity category.

Hundreds of InCommon IdPs and SPs are already a part of the R&S category.

How does Research and Scholarship work?

Research and Scholarship for Service Providers

For an SP, having the R&S entity attribute means "I meet the qualifying criteria to be part of the R&S category."  The InCommon Federation operator reviews SP applications for R&S and assigns the entity attribute to qualified SPs. 

Qualified SPs automatically receive the R&S person attribute bundle from all R&S-supporting IdPs in the federation. This process significantly reduces integration overhead for an SP operator by not having to individually negotiate information release with each institution.

Research and Scholarship for Identity Providers

For an IdP, the R&S entity attribute means "I support R&S." Specifically, the IdP agrees to release basic person information to all qualifying R&S SPs. It does so by making a one-time addition to its default attribute release policy to release R&S attribute bundle to all R&S SPs. 

Once configured, an InCommon participating institution declares support for R&S by clicking a box in the Federation Manager portal.

This one-time configuration provides faculty and researchers instant federated single sign-on access to R&S services without further administrator involvement. When future scholarly projects qualify for the R&S category, collaboration across participating campuses becomes immediate and seamless.

Joining Research and Scholarship category

To join the R&S category, see:

For Identity Provider
Identity Provider - Support Research and Scholarship

For Service Provider
Service Provider - Apply for Research and Scholarship category  

Further reading

Tagging an entity with Research and Scholarship entity attribute

REFEDS Research and Scholarship category specification

Research and Scholarship FAQ

Research and Scholarship Deployment Considerations

Identity provider - support Research and Scholarship

Service provider - apply for Research and Scholarship category

InCommon-Only Research and Scholarship category (deprecated)