Open access in Canada

In Canada the Institutes of Health Research effected a policy of open access in 2008, which in 2015 expanded to include the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council and Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council.^[1][2] The Public Knowledge Project began in 1998 at University of British Columbia.^[3][1] Notable Canadian advocates for open access include Leslie Chan, Jean-Claude Guédon, Stevan Harnad, Heather Morrison, and John Willinsky.^[4]

Journals

• Les Presses de l'Université de Montréal issued one of the world's first open access journals, Surfaces (ISSN 1188-2492) in 1991.^[5]
• FACETS is Canada's first and only multidisciplinary open access journal in Canada.
• Anthropocene Coasts, is a multidisciplinary international open access journal jointly published by Canadian Science Publishing and East China Normal University.
• Arctic Science is a quarterly open-access peer-reviewed journal.

Repositories

There are some 88 collections of scholarship in Canada housed in digital open access repositories.^[6]

Timeline

Key events in the development of open access in Canada include the following:^{[according to whom?]}

• 1994
  • 27 June: Stevan Harnad posts a Subversive Proposal calling on authors to archive their articles for free online.  
• 1998
  • Public Knowledge Project (PKP) established by John Willinsky
• 1998
  • French-language Érudit online publishing platform launched, as a university-based initiative with the ambition to create digital tools and offer services to scholarly journals^[7]
• 2000
  • PKP releases first open source software package, Open Conference Systems (OCS), which it supports until 2014 ^[8]
• 2002
  • PKP launched Open Journals Systems (OJS) as an open source journal publishing platform ^[9]
• 2003
  • 12 Canadian universities host OA journals on their IRs (Institutional Repositories)^[10]
• 2005
  • SFU Dean of Libraries Lynn Copeland initiates PKP partnership with Simon Fraser University Library and the Canadian Institute for Studies in Publishing, led by Rowly Lorimer.
• 2006
  • November: Athabasca University begins policy encouraging deposits in its institutional repository.^[11][12]
• 2009
  • October: York University begins open access policy.^[11][12]
• 2017
  • Coalition Publica founded to support publishing in social sciences and humanities fields.^[13]

See also

• Open data in Canada
• Open educational resources in Canada
• Science and technology in Canada
• Open access in other countries