With the conclusion of the Scholaris Early Adopter Program and Network of Expert Groups earlier this year, we're celebrating the successes of these initiatives and peering into the future as we continue to build capacity for a fully operational service.
From a pilot project with two institutions in 2023, Scholaris has grown to include 30+ participating institutions from across the country operating repositories in English and French, of varying sizes and complexity.
Today, the Scholaris team is hosting and managing close to 700,000 items across Scholaris production instances and storing 7+ TB of data at the University of Toronto Libraries data centre. We’re proud of our growing community and pleased to provide scalable technical architecture and community infrastructure to support our community’s interests and meet the needs of local scholarly networks.
To everyone who has contributed to the development of Scholaris over the past few years to make the vision of shared repository infrastructure into a reality - thank you. The long strides we have made in a short time are evidence of the strength of working collaboratively and in community with one another.
Reflecting on the Scholaris Early Adopter Program
Launched in April 2024, the goals of the two-year Early Adopter Program were to understand the needs of the Canadian repository community for a shared service, develop the service offering and pricing model to operate Scholaris on a cost-recovery basis, and establish scalable infrastructure for migrating, hosting, managing parallel repository instances.
Over the course of the program, the Scholaris service team onboarded, set up, and/or migrated over two dozen Canadian institutional repositories to Scholaris infrastructure. The team worked closely with these institutions throughout onboarding, migration, and post-launch to understand their unique repository contexts and develop a customizable service that accommodates local needs and aligns with broader initiatives in the ever-evolving scholarly communication landscape.
Along the way, the service team has developed technical architecture, flexible migration workflows, and a tiered pricing structure for the service. They have created a wide range of documentation and resources to support Early Adopter institutions, including suggested communications, migration guides, and project materials and templates.
The service team also helped build local capacity and repository expertise among community members by providing opportunities for training, knowledge-sharing, and discussion. Read on for more highlights from the Early Adopter Program.
Milestones from the Early Adopter Program
- Launched 22 institutions on Scholaris infrastructure (view the list).
- Completed four upgrades of the DSpace software, including two major version upgrades. We’re now on DSpace 9.4!
- Hosted over 30 monthly Community Calls and Configurable Entities Working Hours for the Scholaris community.
- Published Scholaris Migration Guide and Communications Kit.
- Published service documentation and resources on SPOTDocs.
- Provided support for PIDs:
- Partnered with DataCite Canada to configure automated DOI assignment via the DataCite API for requesting institutions; Scholaris repositories have now collectively registered over 100,000 DOIs for their repository items!
- Partnered with ORCID CA to configure support for syncing between DSpace and ORCID using the new ORCID integration in DSpace.
- Provided support to streamline repository management and increase visibility of open scholarship, including configuring Single-Sign On methods, Configurable Entities, and crosswalks for external harvesting into global discovery platforms.
- Published Scholaris Terms of Use and Privacy Statement.
- Developed service agreement and pricing model.
Reflections on the Scholaris Network of Expert Groups
Coordinated by the Canadian Association of Research Libraries (CARL), the three Scholaris Network of Expert Groups completed their terms earlier this year. Over a two-year period, the groups met regularly to assess the current Canadian repository landscape, identify shared needs and opportunities for alignment, and prepare recommendations to support the Scholaris team and build capacity among participating institutions. Many of the groups’ outputs also have wider relevance to the broader repository community, helping repository teams and connected organizations implement recognized best practices and address emerging considerations in open scholarly publishing.
You can find reports and recommendations from the Scholaris Network of Expert Groups on TSpace, the University of Toronto repository.
We are grateful to the group members who generously contributed their time and expertise to work through the complexities of repository management and prepare practical guidance. Special and sincere thanks to Gabriela Mircea (University of Calgary, CARL Visiting Program Officer for Scholaris and Metadata Strategies) for her dedication and leadership in coordinating the groups.
Looking ahead: Future directions for Scholaris
As we continue to move towards full operational status, we’ve shifted into a second cycle of service development. This two-year period will see us turn our attention to six key areas:
- Governance modelling;
- Scoping our bilingual service offering and expanding bilingual support;
- Formalizing our preservation service offering;
- Continuing to streamline ongoing service delivery;
- Increasing our involvement in the DSpace community; and
- Providing operational support to Scholaris institutions and contributing to broader initiatives around the recently released Tri-Agency Open Access Policy.
This work is already underway, and we’re excited to share more in the coming months. Stay tuned!
If you’d like to learn more to determine if Scholaris is a fit for your institution, we’d love to hear from you! We recommend reviewing our FAQs and getting in touch with our team so we can answer any questions that you have.
About Scholaris
Scholaris is a national opt-in shared repository service that supports the discovery, management, sharing and preservation of Canadian scholarship by providing scalable infrastructure, technical expertise and community support for institutional repositories at Canadian academic libraries. The service is being developed by the Canadian Association of Research Libraries (CARL), the Ontario Council of University Libraries (OCUL) and the University of Toronto Libraries (UTL), in collaboration with regional consortia, academic libraries, repository practitioners and communities of experts. The service uses open source repository software (DSpace) and is hosted and managed by Scholars Portal at the University of Toronto.