Research and Scholarship for IdPs

Research & Scholarship for Identity Providers

To have your IdP added to the list of IdPs that support R&S:

1. Browse the official list of R&S SPs and IdPs
2. Review the requirements for R&S SPs
3. Read the authoritative Research & Scholarship Entity Category specification
4. Review the Deployment Considerations for R&S document
5. Review your entity info page for consistency, clarity, and completeness
6. Update your metadata as needed
7. [Configure your IdP to release the R&S attribute bundle]
8. Declare your ability to support R&S by submitting a short form

Once this is done, your IdP will be added to the list, normally within one business day.

IdP Deployment Requirements

An identity provider (IdP) supports the Research & Scholarship (R&S) Category if, for some subset of the IdP's user population, the IdP releases a minimal subset of the R&S attribute bundle to R&S SPs without administrative involvement, either automatically or subject to user consent. The following attributes constitute a minimal subset of the R&S attribute bundle:

• eduPersonPrincipalName
• mail
• displayName OR (givenName AND sn)

For the purposes of access control, a non-reassigned persistent identifier is required. If your deployment of eduPersonPrincipalName is non-reassigned, it will suffice. Otherwise you MUST release eduPersonTargetedID (which is non-reassigned by definition) in addition to eduPersonPrincipalName. In any case, release of both identifiers is RECOMMENDED.

IdP Deployment Options

To support the Research and Scholarship Category, an IdP has multiple options:

1. Release the Essential Attribute Bundle to all SPs
2. Release the R&S attribute bundle to all R&S SPs
3. Release a [minimal subset of the R&S attribute bundle] to all R&S SPs
4. Release a [dynamic subset of the R&S attribute bundle] to each R&S SP on an SP-by-SP basis (depending on requested attributes in SP metadata)

The R&S category is the first of many such categories. Soon there will be multiple categories, for both SPs and IdPs, such that each category has its own entity attribute value. To support a given category, an additional software configuration similar to the [R&S IdP configuration] is required.

The use of entity attributes (as opposed to entity IDs) has a significantly reduced administrative burden at the IdP. As the number of categories increases, however, the number of configurations increases as well. It is natural to ask if there is an even higher level of abstraction that further simplifies the administration of attributes? The answer is yes, an IdP can release the Essential Attribute Bundle to all SPs, not just R&S SPs. Such a configuration can simultaneously satisfy the attribute requirements of multiple categories.

If you have further questions, please consult the Research and Scholarship FAQ.