Open Access Helper

URL of Domain Configuration: Improving EZProxy Support

Open Access Helper supports your institutional EZProxy, however when you click the popover you will quickly notice that it will show a EZProxy button regardless of the URL you are on. This will lead your users to errors and you can help avoid this by providing a JSON file, which tells Open Access Helper, which domains you support.

There are two things that are needed:

  1. A JSON configuration file
  2. A publicly accessible URL that you enter in Open Access Helper

The JSON File

The format of the JSON file is quite basic, the Object has three properties id: String, prefix : String and domains : [String].

{
  "id": "123",
  "prefix": "https://proxy.idm.oclc.org/login?url=",
  "domains": [
    "proquest.com",
    "jstor.org",
    "ebscohost.com"
  ]
}

Properties of the configuration object

id

This is the ID of your configuration in Open Access Helper. You can find it by looking at Open Access Helper settings and once you have selected your institution, the ID will be shown in round brackets, as in this example:

prefix

This is simply your EZProxy Prefix up to the URL that needs to be proxied. It usually ends in ?url=

domains

This is an array of Strings. Your EZProxy configuration file will usually be very explicit, for example listing web.a.ebscohost.com and eds.a.ebscohost.com and many more. You could provide this information at that granular level, or you could decide to reduce complexity by allowing everything that includes ebscohost.com. Try to avoid added things like gov.uk or ac.uk as it will match too many sites on the internet

Ask for help

While I had this functionality for a while, it has not been widely used. Please contact me at info@oahelper.org to get help with setup. It is free and I am going to learn a ton along the way 🙂

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