Hello folks,

 

This is a question for any of you who may be using or have tried to use SWORD deposit on an instance of EPrints with external authentication. My apologies if it’s missing necessary information; I’m new to SWORD, and not hoping for a magic solution, just looking for points to consider.

 

Background:

We are trying to accept SWORD 2.0 deposit from ProQuest to our EPrints repository for theses and dissertations. Unfortunately, the first attempts at deposit appear have hung without even reaching the service document, with the error “Never received HTTP response from SWORD server”. I suspect this is because it’s hitting the authentication redirect; we use the university’s central authentication system (Shibboleth) for access to the IR.  

 

I have manually created an account for ProQuest, but that would require them to access EPrints through a specific URL (I don’t know if they read that part of the setup email, or even if that’s an option with SWORD), and I haven’t successfully pulled the service document out to where it can be reached without authentication. We’ve had some issues with manually created accounts redirecting to Shib at every https, and central ITS policy does not allow us the option of creating non-university accounts. We will be talking to ProQuest support soon, but I’m trying to gather as much information as possible before we do.

 

Question:

Have any of you tried to use SWORD deposit with external authentication; what, in a nutshell, was your experience? Any suggestions?

 

Regards,

Kelly

 

Kelly Phillips

Archivist - Collections Manager

Special Collections and Archives

Cline Library

Northern Arizona University

928-523-5038