Am I Missing Something? Understanding How to Improve Repository Discoverability
Date: May 7, 2026
Time: 12:00pm – 1:00pm ET
Institutional repositories are designed to support the integration of local research outputs into the broader scholarly communication ecosystem. However, repository discoverability isn’t automatic. To ensure our repositories are easily discoverable, we must prioritize persistent identifiers, maintain high-quality metadata, and promote interoperability.
However, significant challenges remain. For instance, widely used many popular commercial databases exclude many non-English, regional, less “prestigious” journals, or grey literature shared in repositories. Additionally, inconsistent, inaccurate, and/or incomplete metadata can pose significant issues for item discoverability. We promote the use of persistent identifiers like ORCID, DOI, and ROR, but there are also several misunderstandings and myths associated with these identifiers.
This panel event aims to bridge the gap between the underlying infrastructure and practical implementation, guiding you on how to check and improve your repository practices to achieve greater interoperability of research outputs. We will feature John Aspler (ORCID) and Juan Pablo Alperin (ScholCommLab at SFU, PKP) to help us connect big-picture goals for universal indexing to the day-to-day work of running scholarly communications infrastructure.
This session will be recorded. Real-time captions and translation will be available.
Juan Pablo Alperin
Juan Pablo Alperin is the Scientific Director of the Public Knowledge Project (PKP), and Associate Professor in the Publishing Program, and the Co-Director of the Scholarly Communications Lab (ScholCommLab) at Simon Fraser University. Dr. Alperin is an established researcher of scholarly communications, known for bringing evidence-based perspectives to pragmatic solutions in support of open access and open science. He has published dozens of peer-reviewed publications and delivered countless presentations on related topics. He also serves on the boards and steering committees of international organizations, including the Open Access Scholarly Publishing Association (OASPA) and OpenAlex. His work focuses on making scholarly communication more equitable, inclusive, and publicly engaged, particularly across Latin America and the Global South.
John Aspler
Manager of the Canadian Persistent Identifier (PID) Program at the Canadian Research Knowledge Network (CRKN), has led Canada’s PID Program (including the development and implementation of a National PID Strategy) for the last six years. In this role, he has facilitated numerous international collaborations, pushing forward PIDs in systems used globally, and he currently sits on the DataCite Board of Directors. In 2021, he graduated from McGill with a PhD in Neuroscience, where his passion for public science literacy led him to work on projects about neuroscience in the news. At CRKN, John combines his love of scholarship with a love of libraries by dedicating himself to community service and knowledge access.