Research & Scholarship Category FAQ for Identity Providers
Where can I find complete information on this program?
There is detailed information on this wiki space.
Which services are allowed to use the Research & Scholarship category?
Candidates for the R&S Category include Service Providers that support research and scholarship as an essential component. For example, a service providing tools for both multi-institutional research collaboration and instruction is eligible as a candidate for the R&S Category.
InCommon reviews all applications from potential R&S Service Providers. The InCommon Technical Advisory Committee (TAC) and the InCommon Steering Committee also review and approve the requests. An InCommon web page displays the current R&S services.
Which attributes are released as part of the Research & Scholarship category?
InCommon highly recommends that SPs use a minimalist approach to attributes, only requesting those attributes that they absolutely need. IdPs are encouraged to implement a default policy that releases the R&S attributes to SPs in the R&S Category; implementing this is a one-time change to the IdP configuration. If you are interested, we've provided more-detailed implementation guidance for IdPs on this wiki.
InCommon IdPs are strongly encouraged to release the following attributes to R&S category SPs:
- Email address
- Person’s name
- Person’s username or network ID
- Targeted ID – the unique ID for this user that you provide to service providers
- Affiliation – the properly scoped role this user has.
Does the release of these attributes violate FERPA or other compliance requirements?
We do not believe so. We have worked with university counsels, registrars, and associate provosts to review these and found no issues to date. We have summarized our belief on the wiki. We encourage campuses to reach out and talk to someone that has implemented R&S for their approach.