Enabling single sign-on across EOSC-hub and OpenAIRE services

Integration of the OpenAIRE AAI with EOSC-hub AAI

The European Open Science Cloud (EOSC) aims to provide an Authentication and Authorisation Infrastructure (AAI). The EOSC-hub and the OpenAIRE-Advance projects’ AAIs build on existing AAI services and provide a consistent, interoperable system with which communities can integrate. This way, the communities can gain seamless access to services and resources across disciplinary, social and geographical borders.

The EOSC-hub and the OpenAIRE AAIs have been and continue to be shaped by the recommendations from the AARC project and other relevant alignments that facilitate the use of eduGAIN and federated access for research and thematic services. At the same time, the adoption of standards and open technologies, including SAML 2.0, OpenID Connect and OAuth 2.0, facilitates interoperability and integration with the existing AAIs of other e-Infrastructures and research communities.

By implementing policies that are harmonised and compliant with global frameworks, such as the REFEDS Research and Scholarship entity category and Sirtfi, communities can receive and release consistent attributes, as well as can follow good practices in operational security, incident response, and traceability. Complementary to this, users who don't have an account on a federated institutional Identity Provider are still able to use social media or other external authentication providers for accessing services. Thus, users access outside the traditional user base can be included, opening services to all user groups including researchers, people in higher-education, and members of business organisations and citizen scientists.

Emphasising the need for seamless access across OpenAIRE and EOSC-hub services, the OpenAIRE AAI infrastructure will be integrated with the EOSC-hub federated AAI infrastructure. To this end, exemplar use cases that involve services requiring cross-infrastructure usage are currently been analysed and documented. A pilot will be conducted in the first few months of 2019 to validate the feasibility and the benefits of the AAI integration for the identified use cases. The roll out of the AAI integration in production is planned for the second quarter of 2020.