The Canadian Research Knowledge Network (CRKN) and Érudit have renewed their Partnership for Open Access (POA) for an additional two-year period. This extension will serve as a transition period towards a new long-term partnership agreement planned for 2025, enabling both organizations to work towards a groundbreaking reimagining of the Canadian open access (OA) landscape.
The Partnership for Open Access (POA) is a collective model that provides ongoing financial support to Canadian scholarly journals disseminated on the erudit.org platform. Aligned with the movement to transform scholarly publishing, the POA brings together libraries and journals to establish a sustainable OA environment in Canada. The partnership between CRKN and Érudit was established in 2014 to provide support for Canadian journals and to increase open access for scholarly publications, particularly in the social sciences and humanities. Following the launch of Coalition Publica, CRKN and Érudit extended the agreement in 2017, and in 2018, they entered into a historic five-year agreement. This agreement focused on expanding the Érudit platform to include English and bilingual journals, transitioning journals to open access, strengthening governance, and fostering the growth of the POA internationally.
Building upon their successes, including a significant increase in the number of APC-free/Diamond OA journals on the Érudit platform and support for a total of 223 scholarly journals, CRKN and Érudit engaged in discussions about their future plans. Acknowledging the rapidly changing OA landscape, which includes the adoption of Plan S by the Fonds de recherche du Québec, CRKN and Érudit agreed to extend the current agreement for two years. This extension provides the necessary time to develop a new, long-term, collaborative agreement that will commence in 2025, bringing their shared vision for a sustainable Canadian OA ecosystem to fruition.
Looking ahead to 2025 and beyond, CRKN and its members fully support Érudit in its goal to transition to a Diamond OA publishing model, where OA content is published with community support and without charges to authors or readers. The organizations will continue working together to champion bibliodiversity and sustainability in the Canadian scholarly communications landscape. They will also focus on maximizing CRKN member participation in the POA, aiming for long-term alignment on shared activities in the OA landscape.
The two-year extension of the CRKN-Érudit Partnership for Open Access took effect on January 1, 2023, and includes the participation of 54 CRKN member institutions.
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