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Institutional Repositories

Canadian Repositories Community of Practice

The Canadian Repositories Community of Practice unites professionals managing open repositories in Canadian libraries, academic institutions, and scholarly organizations. 

An institutional repository is a digital archive which centralizes, preserves, and provides access to an institution’s intellectual output. They benefit institutions by raising their profiles and scholars by bringing broader dissemination, increased use, and enhanced professional visibility of scholarly research. CARL fully supports the systematic archiving and access to the digital research output of Canadian academic organizations into institutional repositories as stated in its Position Statement (2013).

CARL is excited to be part of the Scholaris initiative! Our team has worked closely with Scholars Portal, the Ontario Council of University Libraries (OCUL), and University of Toronto Libraries (UTL) to develop this groundbreaking national shared repository service that offers hosted infrastructure and support for Canadian institutional repositories.

→ Learn More About Scholaris

Institutional Repositories Available in Canada

Below is a list of institutional repositories available across Canadian colleges and universities. If your institution is not listed below, consult our list of Adoptive Repositories, intended for those whose home institution does not currently maintain an institutional repository.

Inventory of Canadian Repository Platforms

The Inventory of Canadian Repository Platforms is a community-updated inventory of Canadian repositories which supports discussions on repository infrastructure, software upgrades, and fosters connections among repository managers and developers. Started in 2018 by the CARL Open Repositories Working Group (ORWG)‘s Next Generation Repository Task Group (now inactive), this inventory is currently overseen by the CARL Canadian Repositories Community of Practice Steering Committee. Canadian repository managers are asked to update their repository information annually. Data snapshots are taken in December and stored in the Federated Research Data Repository (FRDR).

→ View the Inventory of Canadian Repository Platforms

Collaboration with OpenAIRE

From 2018 to 2021, CARL collaborated with OpenAIRE through the OpenAIRE Advance project to create a gateway for Canadian scholarly content, focusing on Tri-Agency funded publications. This involved adopting OpenAIRE guidelines, ensuring accurate Tri-Agency affiliations, and developing metadata workflows, resulting in the integration of several Canadian repositories into the OpenAIRE portal. In 2022, the Canadian OpenAIRE Task Force was established to expand this collaboration to more institutions and ensure its sustainable management. OpenAIRE aggregates global research outputs, promoting interoperability and value-added services like metadata curation and usage statistics for repositories.

→ Learn More About OpenAIRE