Ringgold and Ingenta combine to create first centralised source of institutional authentication data
We are proud to announce our latest collaboration with Ringgold, which helps publishers to make their processes more efficient and to identify new business opportunities through smart data analysis. Ringgold's Identify database (which we wrote about in issue 18 of eye/to/eye) contains metadata about more than 100,000 institutions across the world, and the identifier that Ringgold invented to classify each record has become widely-used by publishers to help rationalise subscription data and to reveal gaps at which to target marketing activities. Ringgold has also been proactive in working with others in the information supply chain to make interactions more effective, and more efficient, and its work is now being taken forward by NISO's identifiers project.
Having previously worked with Ringgold on supply chain efficiency pilots, we are now collaborating with them to create the industry's first centralised source of institutional authentication data. We will license to them the IP data we hold for the more than 25,000 institutions registered to access content via IngentaConnect. Ringgold will add this data to their Identify records and their publisher customers will be able to opt in to license this additional data from Ringgold. 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 information will then be syndicated, via Ringgold, to other publishers' databases. Publishers will benefit by being able to license up-to-date, accurate data rather than requiring their customers to perpetually re-register and update multiple versions of the same data. 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 about our collaboration with Ringgold, please see this recent press release.