Step 1: platform assessment

The assessment of your platform allows us to get a deeper technical understanding of how your platform works. It is also an opportunity for you and your team to consider the impact of adopting a new access management tool. 

Here are some of the questions we ask:

  1. How do you control access?

    Publishers and service providers often need more than one access control solution to meet the needs of their audiences. Username and Password, IP recognition and SAML are all part of an access management ecosystem.

  2. Do you have a subscriptions management system?

    A subscription management system is a record of your subscribers and what content they can access. A subscription management system is part of the authorization process after a user has authenticated and it is needed to complete the OpenAthens setup.

  3. Who needs to be involved?

    Early in the project, you may want to make sure that key stakeholders have been involved. Here are some functions that may be impacted as a result of using the new access method:

    • Marketing
    • Sales and customer relations
    • Customer support
    • Product management
    • User experience design
  4. Evaluate your platform's UX

    Access to academic content is difficult, confusing and inconsistent across the different content platforms. Researchers and learners struggle to navigate the complex ecosystem of tools and platforms available to them and opt for alternative sources like ResearchGate or Open Access journals.

    To improve the current user experience, publishers and service providers will need to work together and make it easier for learners and researchers to access content available to them.

    Read our 10 UX recommendations

Ready for the next step?

Take me to step 2