Abstract
In the 1990s many publishers saw the potential of the internet and started to move their content online. This consolidated the need for a shift in their business models from a focus on individuals to IP-mediated institutional access. Libraries were purchasing institution-wide subscriptions with access facilitated through fixed computers, in libraries and offices on campus. Over time, publishers added other institutional authentication mechanisms – trusted referrer URLs, library cards, EZProxy support, and so on – but we never addressed the poor user experience associated with off-campus access. Now, with the rise in mobile and tablet devices and increasing flexibility in work spaces, access control is failing. In this article, I argue that we need to find a balance between our desire for security and lowering barriers to access. As an industry, we can make use of technologies and initiatives which are already in place to help us to strike that balance, encouraging users to access versions of record instead of resorting to less legitimate copies through services such as Sci-Hub.
Highlights
Easy access to the version of record (VoR) could help combat piracy: views from a publishing technologist
In the 1990s many publishers saw the potential of the internet and started to move their content online. This consolidated the need for a shift in their business models from a focus on individuals to IP-mediated institutional access
Publishers added other institutional authentication mechanisms – trusted referrer URLs, library cards, EZProxy support, and so on – but we never addressed the poor user experience associated with off-campus access
Summary
Individuals and organizations have sets of attributes, such as their names, their subscriptions, and so on. One type of attribute is the identifier. I have a lot of identifiers: two personal e-mail addresses and a work one – never mind the e-mail addresses which are defunct; a phone; instant communications through Skype and Slack; multiple social accounts, from LinkedIn, Twitter and Facebook, to Pinterest and – possibly less familiar to you – Ravelry. There are the shopping accounts with Amazon, eBay, Phase Eight, Etsy, and others ... They are all part of one identity: me!. The key takeaway here is that when someone claims to have a lot of identities, what they really mean is that they have a lot of identifiers
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