OpenAthens

An authentication system which ensures that users have access to the content they are entitled to use.

OpenAthens administrators

There are local and national administrators. 

Each NHS organisation with a library service has a local administrator based within the library team.

National Administrator

The Service Desk team at NHS England.

All OpenAthens queries should be sent to the Service Desk. 

Alternatively, email [email protected]. 

Local administrators with OpenAthens problems should report them via the Service desk. The Service Desk team will liaise with the OpenAthens team at JISC, if necessary.

OpenAthens support

The following solutions are available on the Service Desk:

• request OpenAthens administrator rights
• where can I find guidance on OpenAthens administration
• find organisation IDs
• OpenAthens systems - status dashboard

OpenAthens regional statistics

OpenAthens regional statistics can now be accessed via the Tableau dashboards.

The reports show:

• account totals for each OpenAthens organisation
• account totals for each OpenAthens organisation as a % of organisational headcount*
• unique successful account authentications for each OpenAthens organisation
• % of accounts being used (unique successful logins / total number of accounts x 100)

*Note that trust headcounts are taken from NHS Digital workforce data for January each year. They will not include students on placement within trusts and may not account for changes or mergers that may have taken place during the year.

As well as data for each organisation, there is data for each region, and for the overall national picture.

To compare your organisation with others, use the filters on the right hand side of the dashboard.

The default is to show all organisations. You can filter for your region, and just your own organisation. Or you can filter by type of organisation (eg acute, or mental health trusts), or size of organisation to compare your stats with other organisations of a similar type or size. You can also use the filters to select specific time periods.

Please remember that these reports just show you information about OpenAthens accounts and successful authentications. For information about resource usage, OpenAthens resource transfer data is not a reliable indicator and you should use supplier statistics instead.