Authenticating Scientists with OpenID

OpenID in Science Authenticating Scientists on the Web Duncan Hull http://twitter.com/dullhunk The University of Manchester Science Online London The Royal Institution, August 2009

Scientists contributions are increasingly digital in Nature
Contributions to electronic knowledge:
Not just electronic publications in online journals… but also
Edits to wikis
Software development
Blog posts, online conversations
(mailing lists, blog comments, www.researchblogging.org etc)
Standards
Development and maintenance of public databases

Authentication via username + password
to prove we are who we say we are when we make digital contributions

We have way too many usernames and passwords! http://tinyurl.com/too-many-passwords Simon Willison (The Guardian) The average user has [at least] 18 user accounts and 3.49 passwords” This is the problem that OpenID is addressing

How OpenID works
stuff
http://www.myexperiment.org (3rd party)

Open ID is quickly becoming widespread
“ 42,235 sites are now enabled to accept OpenID logins” source http://blog.janrain.com/2009/05/relying-party-stats-as-of-may-1-2009.html

But there are usability “issues” http://albert.einstein.name [email_address] mcsquared OR + 84% 16% Out of 2,300 myexperiment users:

Conclusions
The idea of having one username and password makes a lot of sense but:
Usability issues
URL as a username can confuse
Redirection to a third party on login can confuse
Adoption of OpenID is growing but might not continue
If you’d like to know more about OpenID and related topics in digital identity…

http://www.xmlsummerschool.com
Web services and Identity
http://xmlsummerschool.com/curriculum2009/web-services-identity/

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Authenticating Scientists with OpenID

by Duncan Hull on Aug 25, 2009

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