Strategic Initiatives

A new three-year, read-and-publish agreement was signed with Elsevier. Corresponding authors at the 73 member institutions participating in the Elsevier agreement will benefit from unlimited open access publishing in more than 1,800 Elsevier hybrid journals at no cost to the author (i.e., with no article processing charge (APC)). This agreement has the potential to result in the publication of more than 9,000 open access articles by Canadian authors per year throughout its duration. Learn more about the potential impacts of this agreement.

CRKN also negotiated a new three-year, read-and-publish agreement with Oxford University Press. Authors at the 69 CRKN member institutions participating in this agreement, will benefit from unlimited open access publishing in more than 350 Oxford hybrid journals at no cost to the author (i.e., with no APC), and a 10% discount on APCs when publishing in Oxford’s gold open access journals. It is estimated that the agreement will result in the publication of over 900 open access articles by Canadian authors per year throughout its duration.

The Respectful Terminologies Subject Headings project is part of CRKN’s ongoing efforts to update the Canadiana collections and infrastructure with community-supported improvements, so that researchers seeking content in Canadiana, by and about First Nations, Inuit, and Métis communities, have a better experience. In early 2024, CRKN completed Phase II of this project, which involved removing the term “Indian” from subject headings and, where required, updating the spelling and alphabet of subject headings. For example, the term “Micmac Indians” has been replaced with “Mi’kmaq,” a term that better reflects current usage among the Mi’kmaq community and GLAM organizations in Canada. Next steps for the Indigenous Subject Headings project include continuing our support for the National Indigenous Knowledge and Language Alliance (NIKLA) and their Respectful Terminology Platform Project.

CRKN and Library and Archives Canada (LAC) partnered on a pilot project to improve access to LAC’s materials in the Héritage collection, which contains approximately 60% handwritten material. This pilot used Transkribus Intelligent Character Recognition (ICR) software, which uses artificial intelligence models to identify characters in both digitized handwritten and printed text, to transcribe the handwritten text. CRKN and LAC selected a subset of the RG 10 collection, “Records relating to Indian Affairs,” for this pilot project as CRKN is committed to making Indigenous records more accessible, and this material has a high usage particularly among claims researchers working for First Nations, Inuit, and Métis communities. This project will improve access to a highly used set of records and is the first step towards our long-term goal of making the Héritage collection full-text searchable.

In order to rebuild and enhance the Canadiana infrastructure, CRKN is undertaking an application to the Canada Foundation for Innovation’s Innovation Fund for our project Digital Collections of the Future. This project’s ambitious objectives include converting millions of print and handwritten historical documents into machine-actionable datasets to make the diversity of their content accessible to both human and AI researchers, developing access to the entire body of the data, and finally, promoting new historical discoveries through the creation of citable collections, cross-platform linked data aggregation, and world-class analytical tools.  In 2023–2024, CRKN staff worked with all ten members of the research team for this project to coordinate and support their internal institutional CFI competitions. CRKN also continued to work with members and stakeholders to ensure that the rebuilt infrastructure will cement our member libraries at the heart of the humanities and social sciences research ecosystem through this world-leading open infrastructure.

In spring 2023 the Content Strategy Committee recommended a review of CRKN’s Banding System and formed a working group in conjunction with the Finance and Audit Committee. The review from the working group found that there were some adjustments required to ensure that the banding system was following the recommendations of the original banding task group from 2015. The resulting updates should ensure more stability within the banding system with fewer regular member fluctuations between bands.

The 2023 CRKN Member Summit and AGM took place from October 4 to October 6 in Vancouver, BC and attracted over 100 members, speakers, and special guests. Sessions included discussions on Canada’s national persistent identifier strategy, CRKN’s licensing activities and the Canadian open access landscape, Canadiana and Digital Collections of the Future (CFI project) updates, as well as an infrastructure partners panel, and a strategic planning session. In addition to these sessions, CRKN hosted a reception to celebrate five years of the CRKN-Canadiana merger on October 4, and a reception honouring Dana McFarland as the recipient of this year’s Ron MacDonald Distinguished Service Award on October 5.

A new task group was formed to develop the terms and make recommendations for the transition of the Scholars Portal Journals Platform to a national service for all CRKN members. The call for nominations for the Scholars Portal Journals Expansion Task Group was distributed in fall 2023 and the group was formed in early 2024. The group will work with key stakeholders and help oversee the migration over the transition phase, ensuring a national platform meets the needs of CRKN members.

CRKN staff participated in many initiatives and engagements that helped broaden our national and global reach. Staff are involved in the governance of ORCID, the International Coalition of Library Consortia (ICOLC), the National Information Standards Organization, and SCOAP³. CRKN also contributed expertise to ICOLC’s Statement on AI in Licensing. We also had many staff members presenting at international conferences, highlighted by Executive Director, Clare Appavoo’s keynote presentation, Collaborative, Coordinated, and Connected: Canadian Approaches to Open Infrastructure, National PID Strategy, and Indigenous Data Sovereignty, at the 2023 eResearch Australasia Conference. This presentation focused on the history and future of CRKN as an organization, the benefits of a national PIDs strategy, and next steps to supporting truth and reconciliation efforts in Canada through data sovereignty.

CRKN and the University of Regina partnered on a digitization project that included approximately 200 issues of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police Quarterly (RCMP Quarterly) dating from 1933 to 2000. The collection is a valuable resource for researchers interested in the history of the RCMP and policing in Canada, as well as those researching family members who served in the RCMP. CRKN and the University of Alberta collaborated to add 36 volumes of the Irish University Press Series of British Parliamentary Papers to Canadiana. These volumes were selected based on their relevance to Canadian history and discuss topics related to Great Britain’s administration of Canada in 1802 to 1899. Adding these member collections to Canadiana makes them accessible to researchers globally and adds to the wealth of information on Canada’s past available in the Canadiana collections.

CRKN and Library and Archives Canada (LAC) collaborated to digitize the C.I.44 records of registration arising from the 1923 Chinese Immigration Act, commonly known as the Chinese Exclusion Act, and to then publish them on Héritage. The C.I.44 records were the forms for the mandatory registration of every person of Chinese origin or descent in Canada from 1923 until its repeal in 1947. These are an important resource for Chinese Canadian genealogy and research on Chinese Canadian history as each of these records shows where an ancestor had settled, what they did for work, and their family structure. CRKN and LAC’s collaboration on the 100th anniversary of the 1923 Chinese Immigration Act provides a comprehensive snapshot of the Chinese Canadian community as it entered its darkest period.

CRKN is the secretariat for the Coalition for Canadian Digital Heritage (CCDH). In 2023–2024, CCDH released their Strategic Framework. This document outlines CCDH’s vision for how they can enable digitization, access, and preservation of heritage content in order to build an inclusive future by revealing our histories. The CCDH Strategic Framework also outlined their principles to follow as they work towards their strategic priorities to ensure content of importance to Canadians is digitally accessible, to intentionally and respectfully uncover the hidden stories of Canada’s history, and to build cross-sectoral capacity.

Towards Open Scholarship: A Canadian Research and Academic Library Action Plan to 2025 is a joint open access action plan of CRKN and the Canadian Association of Research Libraries (CARL) and was shared in May 2023. The priority activities in this plan are to disseminate and preserve Canadian scholarly outputs, improve the discovery and tracking of Canadian content, fund international open scholarship research platforms, infrastructures, and services, influence policy developments in Canada, and support innovation. The shared aim is to provide researchers with access to the widest range possible of fair and trusted outputs that are CARE compliant, openly available, and actively preserved over time, with no access or publication fee.

Read Towards Open Scholarship: A Canadian Research and Academic Library Action Plan to 2025

This year, CRKN achieved several milestones as we moved into Phases II and III in the development of the national PID strategy. Phase II produced a substantive series of strategic communications outputs directed at different stakeholders across the Canadian research ecosystem. These outputs will soon be made available to share online. Phase III was launched to identify technical gaps and the concrete steps PIDs can take to address them. CRKN staff also hosted the first annual in-person CPIDAC meeting in March 2024, which resulted in the election of a new committee Chair (Susan Haigh) and Vice-Chair (Kevin Stranack). Furthermore, CRKN staff have participated in conferences nationally and internationally, virtually and in-person, providing updates on the development of the national PID strategy.

The 2023 Ron Macdonald Distinguished Service Award was presented to Dana McFarland, Librarian and Coordinator, eResources and Scholarly Communication at Vancouver Island University (VIU). Among Dana’s accomplishments are the contributions she has made to the academic library community by advancing research data management at other small and medium-sized libraries and by working closely with colleagues at VIU to implement the institution’s first RDM strategy. She has also been one of the early champions of a national PIDs strategy and advocated for accessible participation in the ORCID Canada Consortium (ORCID-CA). Dana is well-regarded by the community for her visionary leadership and commitment to reconciliation and Indigenous knowledge initiatives. The 2023 CRKN Member Summit and AGM in October featured a reception to celebrate Dana’s award and accomplishments.

A pop-up survey was launched on Canadiana in 2023 to learn more about its users and provide CRKN with more data as we make changes to improve user experience. Questions asked respondents about their occupation and topic or topics of interest. At the end of 2023–2024 there has been more than 7,000 responses, including more than 700 respondents interested in future user testing of the Canadiana platform. CRKN will release a report with analysis of the data collected through this survey in fall 2024.