And today I'm really pleased to come and talk to you about the Federal Open Science Repository of Canada. And this repository is a collaborative effort that involves many individuals and organization that I will speak to during the presentation. The initiative itself is being led currently by the Federal Science Libraries Network, which is hosted at the National Research Council, the NRC.

And it's led under Allison Kelly, who is our Chief of the Federal Science Libraries Network. And so with today's presentation, I really want to provide a bit of the context and the policy drivers, which this is what relates to Peck's presentation, and provide you with a brief overview of our tool, including sharing some of the lessons learned that we've learned over the course of this journey

and highlight some of the upcoming milestones. But first, before I really get into the repository itself, I want to set the stage and describe a little bit of the government of Canada's science and innovation landscape.

And so the Government of Canada conducts research in many areas that focus on public benefits. And some examples of these are environmental and weather monitoring, agricultural research, including foreign animal disease, among many, many others. The dozen or so science departments employ about 16,000 professional scientists, which include about 3,500 of them being researchers.

So there's a lot of research happening in Canada, which results in about 4,000 publications that are co-authored by federal scientists annually. And I'll share the link afterwards, but there is a link on the screen where you can learn a bit more about federal science overall in Canada.

But I want to provide a bit of the context, the policy context for the federal open science repository. So broadly speaking, there's been an increased appetite for openness and open access. Yet out of the dozen or so science departments, there's actually only two departments

that have their own publication repository, the National Research Council being one of those two. So in terms of domestic policy context, I wanted to highlight the open government partnership that Canada has been a member of for about a decade.

And so the OGP is an international initiative where governments commit to principles of transparency, including accountability and participation. And as it was previously mentioned, it also requires a biannual national action plan with commitments and timelines. So in the 2018-2020 national action plan, it was outlined that a roadmap for open science as a deliverable

would be necessary for the open science commitment. So you can see this on the screen. This is our number four recommendation. And this is really where this roadmap that was produced by our chief science advisor Canada with

input from an advisory committee, which was chaired by Leslie Weir, which is Canada's librarian and archivist. And among these recommendations, it was recommended that the federal peer reviewed publications be openly available without an embargo as of January 2022. Obviously, that's behind us and we're not quite there yet. But the challenge in

achieving this is that, as I previously mentioned, there's only two departments that have the enabling infrastructure, which was not the case for other science based departments and agencies. And so finally, we also have our Government of Canada's IT department, Shared Services Canada, who have also

identified as part of their plan that's supporting enterprise solutions for science was a key priority of theirs. And so this policy context provides you with a bit of the reasons why we together work towards getting an enterprise solution to meet the Government of Canada's open access objectives.

And so we really have this goal of providing federal researchers with a state of the art repository to make their research results open to enable the roadmap for open science recommendation. So in the longer term, we anticipate that this repository will enhance dissemination and the use of federal science, collect and

curate federal science outputs and ensure permanent preservation, as well as getting a just a better sense overall of federal research outputs. So I'll tell you a little bit more about our technical infrastructure, and this is all thanks to our IT department, Shared Services Canada.

While there were many platforms that were explored, DSpace was the one that was chosen for a few reasons. It is an open source, cost effective solution. It also met all of our requirements, and most importantly, it offered the flexibility for some customization to meet our long term goals.

It's built on a single shared instance of DSpace version 7.3 and is hosted on the cloud. It also provides out of the box features and functionalities with enhanced bibliographic and descriptive metadata. Government of Canada core subject, the source headings, as well as DOI integration and customization to meet our Government of Canada look and feel.

Which is a requirement, along with accessibility privacy in our official languages requirements. The deposit license has also been customized so it ensures compliance with relevant Government of Canada information data management policies.

The system is built to be interoperable with other Government of Canada repositories and was also designed and developed for compatibility and integration. With a Government of Canada enterprise authentication system or ID and a future Government of Canada data repository, but how did we get where we are today.

The federal open science repository really began as a pilot back in 2021. And it was really with the goal of proving the viability of an enterprise solution, so that it could enable us to meet the recommendation number four of our open science roadmap.

The pilot was first led by our office of the chief science advisor and it was funded through the shared services Canada science program. The pilot was really successful in demonstrating the visibility and the benefits of a consolidated approach, so in February of 2022 a multi phase plan was endorsed by our roadmap for open science and the deputy ministers steering committee.

So the goal of phase one, which is where we are today was to move the pilot to production. and quickly deliver a minimal viable product to meet the basic open access publishing requirements of departments that did not already have a solution.

So today to work in phase one has been focused on securing buy in from the departments, establishing the collaboration model documenting our standards and finalizing implementing technical requirements for the launch. So over a three year period, the goal is to enhance the functionality and build capacity, so we can onboard more departments and ensure ongoing sustainability.

So the long term vision is where we hope to realize in phase two and sometime in spring of 2025. And this really involves integrating the repository into a cutting edge centrally funded digital research infrastructure. Which will be available to all of our departments and agencies to enable world class federal research.

So in phase one, this is where the business owner role was transferred from the office of the chief science advisor to the federal science libraries network, as we said at NRC. The FSL and was established in 2014 to develop and manage shared library systems for science base departments and agencies.

To really increase visibility and access the government of Canada collections, as well as open government commitment. A partnership has evolved over the years to include additional shared tools and content. In assuming the role of business owner the FSL and is leveraging its partnerships its

partners expertise in digital collections, including our scholarly communications and collaborative systems and metadata management. we're really building upon a proven governance operations and service models to deliver the federal open science repository program, which is why the office of the chief science advisor turned to us to take it on.

The repository is really an exciting expansion for us in the FSL and so we really are looking forward to supporting the main enablement of government Canada research and open science initiatives.

So I want to tell you a bit about our collaboration model which we're actually just recently standing up and so on the screen it illustrates the relationship between the different collaborators. So the open the operating collaborators are in the Center of the circles and, as I mentioned, we have the FSL and as a business owner so we're coordinating the collaborative activities.

When we have shared services Canada or at department as the product owner for the repository, and so they manage a technical solution. And meanwhile, we have the office of the chief science advisor who's our strategic advisor and they're really responsible for championing open science and ensuring alignment with the long term vision.

surrounding that we have the solid circle around the operating collaborators, which really identifies the activities or manage as a collective using a common framework. So these areas really include strategic and technical planning and decision making. As well as through our established governance, which is just recently being stood up as we're having our first meeting to more of the higher level.

And we're also sharing a technical infrastructure with a coordinated prioritization, so this is where. This is where we have agreed upon cost share model in terms of conditions between all the departments.

And you can see the outer circle is the eight departments that are currently participating in this repository. And so, these include agriculture and agri food, the Canadian food inspection agency, the Canadian space agency, the Department of fisheries and oceans environment and climate change health Canada, the public health agency, as well as transport Canada.

So some aspects of the repository operations are based on common frameworks individual departments do remain independent in managing their own policies publication workflows and content. And they will be responsible for establishing content guidelines that are

appropriate for their specific context, while aligning with their organizational goals. So, for example, whether or not to post preprints that's that's definitely a key topic of interest amongst the departments. The support model is really a collaborative effort between all the parties with the departments, providing their level one support in relation to their own content and local policies.

While the federal science libraries network is providing that level to support and administrative services and, finally, our shared services Canada colleagues are providing that level three support, which is the technical support.

I won't really spend much time on this slide, but I just wanted to convey and highlight the roles and responsibilities between the different groups, so the collaborators, the business owners, the product owner, as well as strategic advisor so move on, but the presentation will be shared afterwards. Now, as you can imagine there's definitely lessons learned throughout this journey, beginning with the pilots.

And so, based on the results of the pilot reconfirmed that siloed repositories across government would have limited value. And that the key to sustainable success is really a seamless connection between the repository and its associated data code data code and collaboration environments as part of really a broader digital research infrastructure.

So, while we work towards this future vision we've adopted a plan to address immediate need for a platform to make federally funded research really openly accessible for the majority of the permits who didn't have one.

So in the short term, it required some level of cost recovery where operating costs are shared across participating departments. We recognize, however, that this shouldn't be only an interim solution. And as such experience from similar federal projects suggest that recovering funds on a year to year basis is really not sustainable in the

longer term, and we need to secure a long term funding through a central ask, which is what we hope to achieve in phase two. And so we really as going through the pilot, it was also discovered that we were part of new business owner. Who was well positioned to this board, and this is how the federal science libraries network with this existing governance took on the interim role of business owner for phase one.

And so the National Research Council really has the authority to operate a national science library and it provides services to other departments, so we were well poised to take on this role.

But we attribute our successes to several factors thus far, and one of the critical critical critical factors was buy in from senior management. So from day one we were fortunate that the project was directed by the open science steering committee, which was co chaired by the chief science advisor of Canada. The chief information officer of Canada and the president of shared services so executive oversight at this level meant that

the project had the necessary visibility and sponsorship to build momentum, which has brought us to where we are today. At the departmental level participants were able to secure the necessary approvals, including funding by tying this initiative to the recommendation of the roadmap for open science.

And their respective individual open science action plans which all of our departments were set to achieve and publish on our sites. Another factor to help us achieve success was adopting an agile approach so instead of following a set path we broke up the work into several phases.

iterating making adjustments as we advance innovation in a federal context is always challenging due to long established systems processes and really a risk adverse culture. So trying to bring those molds and born an agile fashion resulted in many challenges as anyone can imagine with projects,

but it allowed us to learn and advance together by accepting unknowns or scratching along the way and managing the rest. And finally, we leverage a one team approach, so this involved really establishing a coordinated matrix working group. With representation from different functional areas that contributed different skill sets and expertise.

So, for example, we have librarians and science policy analyst at all of these participating departments involved in our various working group levels. And that really allowed us to break silos within and across our departments to build trust and create a synergy, as we all work towards one common goal.

And so it's just recently that we've had our open access week and so that's at that time that we had our soft launch and the FSL and an NRC took on the official role of business owner just at the end of October and so right now. To mark the occasion we did a soft communication internally to our federal

size communities, so that we could build some excitement about the upcoming repository. So from now until spring what we are working towards is training and onboarding the participating departments completing user acceptance testing and, as you can imagine, populating this repository.

And so we are working towards a tentative target date of April 2023 for a full public watch, but, as you can imagine, that will be dependent on how much content, we can upload to our repository. And before anybody asked that target number is not yet known, as we are seeing it tomorrow, so that we

have a target to work towards meaning that when we reach this magical number we're now ready to publicly launch. So I really want to thank you for your time for allowing me to come and present and I invite anybody to ask questions if you haven't.