Our Year in Review

We are proud of the work that we have done this year across all of our programs. Our activities in 2023–2024 support our mission to advance interconnected, sustainable access to the world’s research and to Canada’s documentary heritage. This section provides a quick look at CRKN and key accomplishments of our programs this year.

127 volunteer Board, committee, and task group members.

Supporting 80 academic libraries and 5 research institutions.

Managing licensing expenditures of $146.6 million.

Preserving digital documentary heritage in a Trustworthy Digital Repository with 4 nodes.

Providing access to 64 million pages of digital documentary heritage.

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127 volunteer board, committee, and task group members.

Supporting 80 academic libraries and 5 research institutions.

Managing licensing expenditures of $146.6 million.

Preserving digital documentary heritage in a Trustworthy Digital Repository with 4 nodes.

Providing access to 64 million pages of digital documentary heritage.

Our Programs

Licensing and Open Access

Working with librarians, researchers, administrators, funders, and publishers, CRKN undertakes large-scale licensing of scholarly content for academic institutions in order to expand research capacity in Canada. Currently, CRKN negotiates and manages over 50 licenses on behalf of its member institutions.

As a result of the successful negotiation processes in 2023, CRKN signed new three-year, read-and-publish agreements with Elsevier and Oxford University Press and negotiated another 7 agreements.

open access articles through the Partnership for Open Access between CRKN and Érudit in 2023–2024

In 2023, authors affiliated with CRKN member institutions published 6,247 open access articles as a result of our read-and-publish agreements.

3245 with Wiley

1832 with Sage

831 with Cambridge University Press

288 with Institute of Physics Press

44 with Canadian Science Publishing

Thanks to CRKN member libraries who participate in these negotiated agreements and cover read and publish costs, researchers can publish open access in over

Journals

Committees and task groups involved in Licensing and Open Access:

Content Strategy Committee
- Knowledge Base Entitlements Sub-Committee
- Scholars Portal Journals Expansion Task Group

Canadiana Collections and Infrastructure

CRKN provides access to 64 million pages of Canadian documentary heritage through the Canadiana and Héritage collections and preserves this content through the Canadiana Trustworthy Digital Repository (TDR), ensuring its integrity and accessibility as technologies change over time. CRKN also provides digitization services to our member and stakeholder community, providing best-quality digital reproductions of materials that adhere to metadata and technology standards.

CRKN added 555,420 pages of content to the Canadiana collections in 2023–2024:

4,185

newspaper issues were added (17,069 pages)

1,499

annual issues were added (98,359 pages)

1,071

periodical issues were added (28,842 pages)

187

Héritage reels were added (411,150 pages)

Number of Users on Canadiana platform in 2023–2024

Number of Users on Héritage platform in 2023–2024

Committees and task groups involved in Canadiana Collections and Infrastructure:

Preservation and Access Committee
- Canadiana Content Sub-Committee
- Platform Technical Sub-Committee

Persistent Identifiers

Persistent identifiers (PIDs) are unique digital codes that identify researchers, research institutions, and their works, and are key to maintaining an interoperable and reliable global research infrastructure. CRKN leads the ORCID Canada Consortium and co-manages the DataCite Canada Consortium with the Digital Research Alliance of Canada, providing critical support for these PIDs across the country. In addition, CRKN is currently leading in the development of a national PID strategy.

In 2023–2024: