Identity Management

In many institutions, such as universities, one individual may have multiple identities. He or she may be a graduate student and a teaching assistant. A doctor might be a faculty member and a physician with hospital privileges. Increasingly, researchers work across institutions on large projects and their identity must be verified by systems of partner institutions. Identity can be linked to privileges, as in the ability to access certain systems or types of licensed digital content. CNI has worked on scoping the landscape of identity management and works with organizations such as Shibboleth to encourage standard mechanisms for identity across institutions and in coordination with commercial partners.

In an emerging area, we have been a leader in describing the convergence between identity management systems and personal name authority as used in the context of scholarly communication.