PLEASE NOTE: This information was updated in August 2023 following the Credo platform refresh. For more about the update see here, or contact support@credoreference.com
Institutional Login
Credo Reference supports three Single Sign On (SSO) options that allows the customer institution to manage their own user authentication.
1. Shibboleth
Shibboleth is a standard SSO solution developed by Internet2. Credo customers who have a Shibboleth 'Identity Provider' (IdP) server (or who use an out-sourced Identity Provider) can connect their users to Credo Reference through their IdP. Customers must have their metadata registered with the UK Access Federation in order to connect to Credo.
Configuring Shibboleth
Credo Reference supports your IdP's Identity Provider Entity ID as a login identifier. To make this work, please contact Credo Reference support to let us know your IdP's Entity ID.
Logging In
There are two ways to login via Shibboleth.
- The user can find their institution on our "Where are you from?" page.
- The user can follow a link with your account ID provided by Credo support.
If you need help, just contact support@credoreference.com.
2. Open Athens
Higher Education institutions in the UK can offer access to students offsite using Open Athens Authentication. Credo Reference supports Athens' single-password sign-in, so that once logged into one Athens resource, remote users are logged into all their resources during their session.
UK students can login into Credo Reference with an Athens username and password by logging in through their institution's MyAthens account, or by finding their institution on our "Where are you from?" page. We can also create a WAYFless URL for your institution.
Athens is a popular standard for handling user authentication in higher educational establishments.
3. Open Athens managed by EBSCO
EBSCO is now partnering with Open Athens to manage authentication. To set this up, we will need the following information (usually sent to us directly by EBSCO). You also need to ask EBSCO to enable Credo Reference for your account.
OAFed Entity ID (https://idp.***.edu/openathens)
Scope (****.edu)
Organisation ID
Proxy IP
We add this information to your account and provide a URL using the redirector prefix that Open Athens provides:
https://go.openathens.net/redirector/****.edu?url=https%3A%2F%2Fsearch.credoreference.com