Ringgold and Ingenta create the first centralised source of institutional authentication data 

We recently announced our latest agreement with Ringgold, an organization that provides services to help publishers and their suppliers manage subscriptions more efficiently. Their Ringgold Institutional Identifier is gaining traction as a surefire method of uniquely identifying academic, professional and business libraries worldwide, and our new work with them will lead to the scholarly information community's first centralization of authentication data relating to these institutions.

Ringgold’s licensing of the institutional IP data from Ingenta’s global access control system creates a functioning system in which administrative updates to one registration database (Ingenta) may be securely syndicated (via Ringgold) to other participating publishers’ systems – Ringgold’s publisher partners include Oxford University Press, Taylor & Francis and SAGE.

The system puts into practise the principle of subsidiarity, whereby control is given to those with local authority– in this case, institutional librarians. The long-term benefit as the data becomes more widely licensed is that, ultimately, librarians will need only to register and update their authentication details in one location (IngentaConnect). This should streamline the process of accessing scholarly materials for all parties, and remove some of the major frustrations currently experienced by institutional administrators.

For more information, read the recent press release, or contact us.