- Towards Open Scholarship: A Canadian Research and Academic Library Action Plan to 2025 (2023)
- Guide to Author Rights (2019)
- How to Assess a Journal (2017)
- Scholarly Communications Roadmap (2017)
- CUSP: Canadian Universities and Sustainable Publishing (2016)
- Altmetrics in Context (2013)
- Position Statement on Open Access (2013)
- Canadian Author Addendum to Publication Agreement
Communities of Practice
Scholarly communication generally encompasses the cycle through which research and other scholarly works are created, evaluated for quality, disseminated to the scholarly community, and preserved for future use.
In early 2017, CARL released a Scholarly Communications Roadmap, which presents clear activities CARL aims to undertake to stimulate positive change towards an open, sustainable, effective and innovative scholarly communication system.
Open Access
Open Access (OA) enhances the accessibility of scholarly research by making it digital, free of charge, and free from most copyright restrictions, while ensuring proper attribution to authors. CARL is deeply committed to OA, as asserted in its Position Statement on Open Access (2013), and having signed key international declarations like the Budapest Open Access Initiative and the Berlin Declaration.
CARL supports institutions in developing OA policies through resources like the CARL Institutional Open Access Policy Template and collaborates with CRKN on a national strategy for open scholarship, having conjointly developped Towards Open Scholarship: A Canadian Research and Academic Library Action Plan to 2025 (2023).
Sustainable Publishing
The scholarly publishing landscape is evolving due to technological advances, financial constraints, and the rise of open access (OA) models. CARL’s position paper, CUSP: Canadian Universities and Sustainable Publishing (2016), explores these challenges and potential solutions.
CARL supports sustainable publishing by promoting open access journals, exploring evolving funding models for long-form publishing, and enabling discussions on author funds, such as through Library Open Access Funds in Canada. The Canadian Scholarly Publishing Working Group (active from 2016–2017) laid important groundwork for these ongoing efforts.
Information for Authors
CARL helps authors and librarians by offering valuable resources on key scholarly communication topics. The Guide to Author Rights (2019) explains the benefits of retaining copyright, allowing authors to control their work’s distribution and reuse. The Canadian Author Addendum to Publication Agreement enables authors to retain certain rights when publishing, supporting compliance with open access policies. It also covers Altmetrics in Context (2013), which explores the emerging field of altmetrics, and How to Assess a Journal (2017), providing advice on evaluating journal quality. Additionally, guidance on handling takedown notices is provided for authors dealing with requests to remove work from public repositories.