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: K. Shearer and S. Haigh have been in touch with representatives from the Tri-Agencies — who have expressed interest in this initiative as a possible way to track compliance by funded researchers, but also to better understand the availability of Canadian research through green OA. Based on Université Laval’s experience implementing OpenAIRE metadata, this group is developing a document outlining which metadata fields will require the most attention. This group plans to set up a meeting with the repository community to fully describe the benefits and what is required at the institutional level to implement OpenAIRE guidelines. (Details on OpenAIRE project)
Task Group for Community Building & Awareness Raising: Two community calls were held on May 24, one in English and one in French. Those who participated expressed substantial interest in engaging with ORWG activities, in strengthening the connection and communication across Canadian repository managers, and in having an active voice in terms of scholarly communication and open access policy. Based on this feedback, the task group is currently exploring options for a Spring 2019 national gathering of the Canadian scholarly communication and repository community, and is planning to share quarterly updates of the ORWG’s work.
Task Group on Standards for IR Usage Data: Members of this task group are producing SWOT analyses of the main solutions for reliable, standardized IR usage data (RAMP, IRUS-UK, OpenAIRE Analytics Service), which will help them recommend the best approach for Canadian repositories. Their other main task, at present, is to identify which practices are currently in place at Canadian repositories. An online survey has been set up and shared with the repository community to collect this information.
Task Group on Next Generation Repositories: In collaboration with COAR, the ORWG presented a webinar about Next Generation Repositories in May 2018, which served as an excellent overview of the evolving technologies and how these are clustered around nodes of functionality. This task group is now working on a current snapshot of Canadian repositories, and is identifying use cases to be prioritized from the NGR report.
In addition to its task group work, the ORWG has been discussing other ongoing and emerging issues related to repositories:
- Arlene Whetter and Karin MacLeod from LAC met with the ORWG in May to discuss the harvesting of theses from institutional repositories. Shortly after the meeting, Arlene posted an update to the REPOS-L list, which gave a similar update, acknowledging that no harvesting is currently happening and that an interim approach in being developed until the LAC’s digital assets management (DAM) system is functional. The ORWG will be following up with LAC in the near future regarding the implementation of a temporary solution.
- Pierre Lasou (U. Laval) presented a poster about the ORWG at the LIBER Conference in July 2018.
- The ORWG has begun brainstorming on the topic of repositories and collection development policies, and whether there would be any benefit to having a cohesive national statement on what repos are seeking to share and preserve. This discussion is ongoing.
- Though not a task group per se, a subgroup of the ORWG (M. Whitehead, K. Shearer, C. Steeves, B. Owen) is working to engage with administrators around repositories, to ensure that there is a strong understanding of repositories’ work and potential for making the scholarly record openly accessible.
- The ORWG plans to invite Umar Qasim, Chair of the Portage Preservation Expert Group to a future meeting to speak to the recent Portage Position Paper on Research Data Preservation in Canada.
If you have any questions, please feel free to contact the following members of this task group: Ann Barrett ( / 902-494-1669), Lise Brin ( / 902-318-4485), Amy Buckland ( / 519.824.4120 x 53877) .
Leah Vanderjagt, lead
Task Group for Community Building & Awareness Raising
