CRKN continued its collaboration with the Regional Consortia (BCI, CAUL, COPPUL, OCUL) as we collectively aim to eliminate duplication of licensing efforts and find other ways to improve efficiencies in the work we undertake as consortia. Throughout 2019-2020, CRKN and the regional consortia shared information on our license renewal activities and co-developed statements to vendors in response to the financial crisis due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

CRKN continues to participate in the Implementing New Knowledge Environments (INKE) initiative. This year, CRKN supported the Canadian-Australian Partnership for Open Scholarship (CAPOS) gathering as well as the 2020 Victoria gathering. CRKN also provided funding for live streaming of the keynotes.

CRKN continues to support the development of Canadian infrastructure for open scholarship as we strengthen our partnership with Érudit. As part of our collaboration, we contributed the Canadiana collections to a corpus of historical content for text and data mining. Additionally, we have met on several occasions to discuss the evolution of the partnership as Érudit transitions their scholarly journals to full open access at the end of the current agreement. CRKN also participated extensively in consultations around Coalition Publica’s strategic plan, which is expected to be published in the near future. CRKN continues to have representatives on the Coalition Publica Stakeholder Advisory Committee and the Érudit Board of Directors.

On January 1, 2020, CRKN collaborated with CARL Portage to launch the DataCite Canada Consortium, formerly managed by the National Research Council (NRC). With CARL Portage providing technical support and CRKN providing administrative support we are collectively able to expand our support for organizations by providing digital identifiers for scholarly content. Additionally, one-time transition funding was provided by Portage’s RDM Directed Funding administered through CANARIE so that there was no cost to members. Membership in the DataCite Canada Consortium is open to research organizations throughout Canada.

2019-2020 was a successful year for ORCID-CA. We welcomed three new members, including the Bank of Canada, CIFAR, and Kwantlen Polytechnic University, bringing the total to thirty-seven. There are currently more than 118,000 ORCID iDs in Canada, an increase from 100,000 in 2018-2019 and 86,000 in 2017-2018.

Governance

ORCID-CA Governing Committee

ORCID-CA is governed by

• Guy Bilodeau (Université Laval), 2020
• Robert Chen (University Health Network), 2020
• Thane Chambers (University of Alberta), 2021
• Inba Kehoe (University of Victoria), 2021
• Andrea Kosavic (York University), 2021
• Courtney Matthews (Queen’s University), 2020
• Patricia Moore (Carleton University), 2021
• Michael Nason (University of New Brunswick), 2021
• Stephanie Orfano (University of Toronto), 2020
• Lisa Goddard (University of Victoria)

ORCID-CA Advisory Committee

• Lisa Goddard, Chair (COPPUL)
• Clare Appavoo (CRKN)
• John Barnett (OCUL)
• Caroline Boutin (CIHR)
• Trevor Davis (CARA)
• Susan Haigh (CARL)
• Bartek Kawula (Scholars Portal)
• Mark Leggott (RDC)
• James MacGregor (PKP)
• Marc Rousseau (Compute Canada)
• Tobias Spears (CASRAI-CA)
• Derek Trevorrow (SSHRC)
• Tom Vitez (CANARIE)

Throughout the year, CRKN continued to encourage publisher implementation of COUNTER Release 5. While adoption by publishers has been slow, in order to support the international community as well as to improve compliance amongst publishers with whom CRKN licenses content, CRKN signed a letter initiated by Jisc and supported by the International Coalition of Library Consortia (ICOLC) to encourage publishers to move to the new release as soon as possible.

Representing its members, CRKN serves on the Advisory Board of the Consortia Collaborating on a Platform for Library Usage Statistics (CC-PLUS) project. CC-PLUS was initiated by the International Coalition of Library Consortia (ICOLC) with the objective of developing an open technology prototype of a usage data platform for library consortia and their member libraries. In addition, in 2019, CRKN joined the Product Management Team which is developing the interface and core functionality of the new software.

This year, in collaboration with CARL, CRKN joined the Sustainability Coalition for Open Science Services (SCOSS). SCOSS is a global network of influential organizations committed to helping secure open access and open science infrastructure well into the future. Its purpose is to provide a co-ordinated cost-sharing framework that will ultimately enable the broader open access and open science community to support the non-commercial services on which it depends. In 2019, CRKN facilitated round one of the SCOSS funding campaign (for support of  the Directory of Open Access Journals and SHERPA/RoMEO) for our members, who contributed a significant amount of funding to the ongoing sustainability of these organizations.

CRKN sits on the Steering Committee of the National Heritage Digitization Strategy. Bringing together stakeholders from across the country, the NHDS aims to provide a cohesive way forward for the digitization of the collections of Canadian memory institutions, ensuring their relevance in the digital age by making their collections easily accessible. The NHDS assists in the acceleration of digitization, and assures the long-term viability of digitized documentary heritage by encouraging quality, standards-based efforts.