ORWG Update – February 2019

The ORWG has been busy over the past few month – this update will summarize the work we have been doing.  (Just a brief reminder that the CARL website features a page devoted to the Open Repositories Working Group, where you can find the group’s terms of reference, the terms of reference of its four task groups, a list of members, and where we will feature links to any publications we produce.)

We welcomed one new member to our group in September, Lindsey MacCallum, who is a Scholarly Communications Librarian,  Repository Manager, and Archivist at Mount Saint Vincent University in Nova Scotia. Lindsey is interested in how smaller institutions can work with OA and how resources and best practices can include small institutions.  She has joined the Task Group for Community Building & Awareness Raising.

The majority of the ORWG’s work in recent months has been concentrated in its four task groups. Here are brief updates of these groups’ work:

Task Group for OpenAIRE: The group has been investigating repository platforms and roadmaps to implementing OpenAIRE.  Kathleen Shearer met with representatives of the Tri-agencies on behalf of this task group to present the OpenAIRE service and request their support for the pilot project. Reactions were very positive and it was noted that there is currently no good way to track compliance with the policy.  The group has also discussed tools like Unpaywall as ways to explore compliance.

Next steps include developing ways to refer to funders in metadata and working on a rationale for IR managers for implementation.  The group would like to host a community call in the near future   (Details on OpenAIRE project)

Task Group for Community Building & Awareness Raising: The CBAR Task Group has focused largely on planning a 1.5-day event titled Advancing Open which will take place May 6-7, 2019, just prior to the Library Publishing Forum in Vancouver.  Advancing Open is an opportunity for the Canadian academic library scholarly communication practitioner community to convene and explore refreshed strategies to foster open scholarship in Canada. Practitioners, who have constant immersion in the open access space, are uniquely positioned to consider activities, supports, and priorities at local, regional, and national levels that will advance open access and related open scholarship activities across Canada. This will be a facilitated discussion and participative event and a Save-the-date has been sent out to the community.  The task group is working with PKP on timing and cross-promotion  (PKP is hosting a “sprint” event in Vancouver on the same days) to ensure that practitioners can participate in both events.

Task Group on Standards for IR Usage Data: Members of this task group have been gathering information about individual institutions’ approaches to IR usage data via an online survey and analyzing and visualizing the data received. The results will give us a snapshot of where we are nationally.  They are at the point of preparing a report with recommendations and will include a checklist of requirements to operationalize the assessment of different approaches.

Task Group on Next Generation Repositories:  This task group is identifying use cases to bolster arguments for the adoption of “preserving resources” as outlined in the NGR Recommendations. Use cases will provide a plain-language demonstration of application. The goal is to summarize and evaluate repository systems’ digital preservation functionality in use in Canada and to make recommendations to augment preservation strategies for Canadian repositories. The group has also identified the need to assemble a current snapshot of Canadian repository infrastructre to inform personalized and targeted messaging strategies to repository managers. In the interest of sustainability, the group is seeking to align with the CARL Statistics gathering process as a means of updating platform information on an annual basis.

Other activities:

  • The ORWG has had several guest presentations from: Umar Qasim, Portage Preservation Expert Group who provided a summary of the Portage Position Paper on Research Data Preservation in Canada  and another presentation from Lindsey MacCallum regarding the results of her recent research and survey of IRs in Canada.
  • Plan S – The group had an extensive discussion led by Kathleen Shearer who was involved with COAR in planning a response to the draft ‘Guidance on the Implementation of Plan S’. Concerns included the financial implications of Plan S, not privileging green over gold, allowing APCs, DOI implementation, the allowance of CC-BY, technical requirements  like automatic ingest and more

If you have any questions, contact any of the following members of the Task Group for Community Building & Awareness Raising: Ann Barrett (ann.barrett@dal.ca / 902-494-1669), Lise Brin (lise.brin@carl-abrc.ca / 902-318-4485), Amy Buckland (buckland@uoguelph.ca / 519.824.4120 x 53877), or Lindsey MacCallum (lindsey.maccallum@msvu.ca / 902-457-6402).