Open scholarship activities and initiatives

Open scholarship is an approach and practice to the creation and dissemination of knowledge that values inclusion, social impact, accessibility, and participation. Open scholarship is public-facing and intersects with community-engaged research and knowledge mobilization. It encompasses sub-domains such as open access, open data, open education, and open science, among others.

SFU Library advocates for open access and plays a pivotal role in moving scholarship towards a more open, innovative, and accessible model.

 Key Library initiatives that support open scholarship

SFU Open Access Policy

In January 2017, SFU Senate endorsed the SFU Open Access Policy (OAP) acknowledging the commitment of SFU faculty, students, and postdoctoral fellows to share the products of their SFU research with the broadest possible audience.

Summit Research Repository

Summit is the Simon Fraser University research repository, a place to bring together selected SFU scholarship and research and to promote this work to the wider world via open access.

Financial support for open access publishing

The SFU Open Access Fund is pleased to support SFU authors publishing in fully open access journals that charge Article Processing Charges.

Library consortia participation

The Library supports open access initiatives via cooperative resource sharing and partnerships.

Digital Scholarship

The Digital Scholarship team supports SFU researchers with Scholarly Communication, research impact, ORCID, and author rights. They manage the Scholarly Publishing and Open Access webpages, and oversee content on the Radical Access blog.

Digital Publishing and the Public Knowledge Project (PKP)

The Digital Publishing team at SFU Library offers software, training, and expertise for members of the SFU community who are publishing online open access journals and books using PKP’s Open Journal Systems and Open Monograph Press.

The Public Knowledge Project (PKP) develops (free) open source software and conducts research to improve the quality, reach, and diversity of scholarly publishing.

 Library support for finding, sharing, and learning with open scholarship

Open Data

The Data Services team provides support and expertise on finding openly licensed data as well as on steps you can take to share your research data openly. These steps include making research data openly accessible by organizing, cleaning, and describing it, and then depositing it in an open online repository; and also by using open non-proprietary file formats and an appropriate open license.

Open Education

In June 2022, SFU Senate endorsed a Statement in Support of Open Education and Open Educational Resources (OER).

SFU Library is committed to reducing financial barriers to students' learning and academic success through the use of Open Educational Resources (OER).

 Other Library units supporting open scholarship

Digital Humanities Innovation Lab (DHIL)

The DHIL assists SFU researchers with the development of digital scholarship research by providing consultation, training, mentoring, research software development and technical support to faculty and graduate students.

Knowledge Mobilization

SFU is committed to providing sustained resources to support researchers in sharing research findings with wider communities in meaningful ways. This commitment to knowledge mobilization is intended to facilitate wider public engagement with research and deepen connections between researchers and knowledge users. SFU's Knowledge Mobilization Hub provides services and supports to SFU researchers across all three campuses.

Scholarly Digitization Fund

The Scholarly Digitization Fund covers costs associated with digitizing scholarly materials. The author/owner or proposer must be willing and able to grant SFU the right to preserve and provide open access to the work, unless pertinent Indigenous protocols would be infringed.

Community Scholars Program

In partnership with other BC universities, the Simon Fraser University Library coordinates a program to support the information priorities of staff of charitable and non-profit organizations in British Columbia. The program makes available a dedicated portal with access to otherwise paywalled publications and provides librarian consultation, workshops, and other engagements. Situated at 312 Main, alongside the Community Engaged Research initiative, the Community Scholars Program values community research and expressions of knowledge.

 Research and resources

Gallilee, P., Moore, A.J., Zerkee, J. (2020). SFU Open Access Policy Report 2020. http://summit.sfu.ca/item/20041