Page 18 - April_June 2017

Article

Access to E-Resources for Indian Higher Education System and the Role of INFED
(INFLIBNET Access Management Federation)
Yatrik Patel, Scientist – D (CS) & Raja V, Scientist – B (CS)

Indian Universities and institutions of higher education have witnessed a boost in e-resources accessible to their

users through various consortium initiatives. However, at present, mostly the access is restricted to only
university/institute campuses within specific IP ranges. There is a need to widen the access of e-resources. Ideally
the access to e-resources should be available to users from anywhere i.e. on-campus, off-campus, from home, while
travelling and at any given point of time. The purpose of this article to give an overview of the role of INFED
(INFLIBNET Access Management Federation) to expand the reach of e-resources and make some suggestions about
how effective it is from perspective of practice with a view to justifying its role. This paper attempts to describe the
scope of INFED and benefits of inter federation services, beyond the features off-campus access.

Keywords: University Libraries, Access Management Federations, INFED, Identity Provider (IdP), Service Provider
(SP), Higher Education, Off-campus access, Inter-Federations

1. Introduction Now SAML2.0 (Security AssertionMark-up Language)
isan XML standard for exchanging authentication and
Tim Berners-Lee, the computer scientist whoinvented
authorization data between security domains.
the World Wide Web (WWW) in 1989, realised that
“Authentication” is a kind of confirmation from the
true information can be accessed by anyone, anywhere
identity that he/she is the legitimated or registered user
can use it without paying a fee or seeking permission .
with our organization. Where as “authorization” is a
But the real scenario is different. The most of publisher
rights or privileges to the certain resource groups. This
who owns the copyright of the material refuse to
SAML 2.0 has been agreed by most of the publishers
provide access to their material free of cost to anyone.
(Service Providers) to exchange user attributes and
Institutes are already spending huge amount of money
allow them access to the restricted content anytime and
on subscribing to e-resources for their users. But most of
any where. In this context, INFED is a formal federation
the institutions are not paying much attention to ensure
that act as a trust entity between Institutes and
consistent and reliable access of those resources an
Publishers.
anywhere and anytime basis to their users. There are

number of mechanism that exists to provide off-campus 2. About INFED
access to e-resources such as Proxy Server, Virtual
INFLIBNET Access Management Federation (INFED),
Private Network (VPN), etc. however implementing this
the first and only Federation in India, that has adopted
mechanism will be the extra burden to the institution,
Shibboleth (a SAML based) open source software, for
on the other hand the e-resource service provider is
authenticating authorized users from colleges and
demanding the user to access their paid resources only
universities and provide them seamless access to e-
when they are in campus, due to lack of trusted secure
resources from anywhere, anytime. The INFLIBNET
attribute exchange from the institution about users and
Centre, as one of its core mandates, provides access to
their roles

14 Vol. 24, No. 2 (April to June, 2017)