At the UNESCO General Conference in fall 2019, the organization was tasked with developing a Recommendation on Open Science. UNESCO describes open science as comprising open access, open data, and being “open to society” (UNESCO n.d. p. 2). It notes, however, that although the Open Science movement is gaining worldwide momentum, there is to date no consensus about how to define open science or its goals.
At CRKN, we are now well into the first year of our 2019-2024 Strategic Plan, launched in October 2019 at our annual Conference. It has been an exciting and fruitful first year, and we are looking forward to continuing to enact our strategic goals in collaboration with our members and stakeholders.
In August 2019, John Maxwell and a team of authors with the Canadian Institute for Studies in Publishing at Simon Fraser University (SFU) published a report called Mind the Gap: A Landscape Analysis of Open Source Publishing Tools and Platforms (2019). Complementing Educopia’s Mapping the Scholarly Communication Landscape 2019 Census released in June 2019, the report inventories open source publishing software and the system of community infrastructure to which it belongs (Maxwell et al. 2019, p. 1–2).
As the COVID-19 pandemic has forced research institutions around the world to temporarily close campuses and transition to online working and learning, it has also prompted researchers to make their COVID-19 related research openly available as never before.
On May 14, 2020 The Canadian Association of Research Libraries announced the release of its Institutional Open Access Policy Template for Canadian institutions, which is accompanied by a toolkit to help prepare those wishing to develop such a policy on their campus.
The Canadian Research Knowledge Network – Réseau canadien de documentation pour la recherche (CRKN–RCDR) revisits its strategic plan every three to five years. The CRKN 2019–2024 Strategic Plan is the first to be developed after CRKN’s merge with Canadiana.org in 2018. As such, the plan encompasses CRKN’s commitments to improving access to knowledge and to preserving and ensuring access to Canada’s digital heritage materials (CRKN 2019a). It was published in October 2019 after a comprehensive consultation process.