Balancing user convenience with content security Why worry about abusive downloads? (won’t more activity simply decrease your cost-per-download?)
• Erodes trust in publisher claims (e.g., top-downloaded articles) • Skews business intelligence about which content matters to the community • Relocates content to (illegal) off-platform locations To curtail abuse, publishers inconvenience users
At The Optical Society • Daily download limits (with cutoffs) • Hourly limits (with timeouts and CAPTCHA) • CAPTCHA of varying difficulty levels CAPTCHA
• Must use a reasonable difficulty level • Must accommodate those with visual impairments • Must work in China (can’t use the popular ReCAPTCHA from Google) How we identify download-abuse patterns
• Same article • Same journal/volume/issue • Time intervals • Distribution among IPs • Turnaways IP authentication Federated access The WAY/WAYF problem
Who Are You? Where Are You From? • Username/password (hard) • IP authentication • Two-step authentication (easy, but . . .) (harder) • Location detection • Credentials can be shared (e.g., with Sci-Hub) • Identify institution • Device ID (easier) manually • Personal privacy concerns WAY + WAYF = %#@!
Who Are You? Both Where Are You From?
Hard! Really Hard! Easier! Google CASA (Campus Activated Subscriber Access)
Allows Google Scholar Subscriber Links to work off- campus
Connection between User and Institution via device pairing
“Hands-free” solution for WAY+WAYF access Google CASA (Campus Activated Subscriber Access) from any website Strengths Weaknesses with Universal CASA • “It just works” for eligible users • Works only for Google Scholar search results (only w/participating • High number of GS users and publishers) publishers with Subscriber Links Access through CASA requires on- • May help with mobile adoption • campus device pairing • Information about people and Access must be periodically institutions anonymized • renewed (every 30 days) • CASA approach to abuse monitoring seems reasonable THANK YOU
Scott Dineen Sr. Director Pubs Production & Technol. [email protected]