The four task groups that make up the CARL Open Repositories Working Group (ORWG) have been very active over the past few months, each of them drawing together the sum of their activities into reports to be shared with the community in late 2019/early 2020.
Task Group for OpenAIRE: The 3-phase OpenAIRE pilot, which involved nine Canadian institutions, ran from June to November 2019. Findings from the pilot will be drafted in a final report and will include recommendations for other Canadian institutions. This report will be released in the coming months.
Significant progress has been made following overtures from the OpenAIRE Task Group to the Tri-Council funding agencies, who have agreed to support the OpenAIRE project. A press release announcing this partnership was distributed in October 2019.
The OpenAIRE group has other ongoing activities:
- A 4Science offer has been secured for compliance for DSpace 5 and 6 (see press release)
- Developing a feed that will allow Open AIRE to ingest from Portage and FRDR.
Further communication from the group regarding these initiatives will be coming out soon.
Task Group for Community Building & Awareness Raising: The Advancing Open event that took place May 6-7 in Vancouver resulted in a significant exchange of ideas and generated much discussion. The task group distilled and synthesized the discussions from the event into a summary document, which was made public in October 2019 for feedback from the scholarly communications community. There was a hope that further comments and opinions could be gathered from groups who were underrepresented at the event, but no further submissions were received.
The group is now writing a final report which will expand upon the summary document and more deeply explore the ideas expressed at Advancing Open. This report will be distributed publicly in early 2020, giving voice to a group of professionals who don’t often have a common forum to express their concerns and ideas for advancing open scholarship.
Task Group on Standards for IR Usage Data: Members of this task group have prepared a recently distributed report with recommendations regarding collection of IR usage data across Canadian repositories. This report explores usage statistics as a metric worthy of interest and capture for repository managers, and is aimed at identifying the means by which to achieve that goal.
Task Group on Next Generation Repositories: The discussions and activities of this task group have led to a report that was released published entitled Digital Preservation Functionality in Canadian Repositories.
The group identified the need to compile an inventory of repositories across Canada. The hope is that having such an inventory available more broadly may be helpful in encouraging community conversations around next generation repository infrastructure, making a case for the upgrade of software, building a community of practice, and many other potential scenarios.
They have asked each institution with a repository to verify the spreadsheet entry for their institution by January 15, 2020. The spreadsheet can be found at and is openly editable to accept edits in “suggestions” mode.
The group is also working with ORCID-CA and is planning on providing an update/webinar pertaining to ORCID integration within repository infrastructure, which will draw upon the Recommendations for Using ORCID in Repositories report.
Future of ORWG: The ORWG had a two-year mandate to complete its proposed goals; this time is quickly coming to an end. In light of its success and continued interest in supporting Canada’s network of repositories, CARL has renewed the group’s mandate under a slightly revised Terms of Reference for another two-year period (2020-2021). A number of current members will remain with the ORWG, ensuring continuity for the group, while others are leaving to pursue different activities. A call for new members was recently circulated through a number of channels. The new membership will be announced in early January.
If you have any questions, please contact Lise Brin ( / 902-318-4485).
