Within eduGAIN, Entity Categories are used. Entity Categories group federation entities that share common criteria. Entities (Identity Providers and Service Providers) can declare in their metadata to which Entity Categories they belong. This must be reviewed and approved by the federation the entity belongs to.

The goal of Entity Categories is to allow Identity Providers to release their attributes more easily to a group of Service Providers, instead of each individual Service Provider. In the latter case, the Identity Provider has to review each Service Provider separately, which costs a lot of time. With Entity Categories, the Identity Provider trusts the entire group at once.

Currently, the following Entity Categories are used within eduGAIN:

Research and scholarship

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Code of Conduct

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Hide from Discovery

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