Coalition Publi.ca, a national partnership providing sustainable support for journals transitioning to open access.

Created in the spring of 2017, Coalition Publi.ca aims to establish an infrastructure dedicated to the digital production and dissemination of research results in the Canadian humanities and social sciences (HSS). The project is now guided by an advisory committee with representatives from various stakeholders within academia.

Developed by Érudit and the Public Knowledge Project (PKP), two leading Canadian organizations focused on the digital dissemination of scholarly publications, Coalition Publi.ca is a pan-Canadian, non-commercial initiative. Its goal is to strengthen the collaboration between Canadian stakeholders (platforms and dissemination tools, journals, libraries, university presses, etc.) by means of a national infrastructure where each plays a complementary role in the scientific production chain.

Coalition Publi.ca is supported by 53 university libraries, all members of the Canadian Research Knowledge Network (CRKN). It is also funded by the Canada Foundation for Innovation, Université de Montréal, Université Laval, Université du Québec à Montréal, Simon Fraser University and the Fonds de recherche du Québec – société et culture.

Areas

It is currently active in three main areas:

Developing a support program for Canadian scholarly journals in the humanities and social sciences;
Aligning Érudit’s and the PKP’s technological developments to create a national production, dissemination and research infrastructure offering a comprehensive range of scholarly publishing services to the Canadian community;
Organizing research activities focused on the evolution of the scholarly publishing sector.

Coalition Publi.ca is also intended to serve as a strong ally in favour of scientific bibliodiversity. The supported journals, in large part independent and non-profit publications, feature innovative research focusing on local, national or regional topics.

Adivsory Commmittee

The establishment of an advisory committee will help support Coalition Publi.ca in the development of its activities, the evolution of its governance and the implementation of a sustainable funding strategy. Chaired by Jason Luckerhoff (editor of the journal Approches inductives and professor at the Université du Québec à Trois-Rivières), the committee is comprised of representatives from the Canadian Association of Research Libraries (Lesley Balcom), the Canadian Research Knowledge Network (Todd Mundle), Research Data Canada (Mark Leggott), Compute Canada (Robbin Tourangeau, alternate Marc-Etienne Rousseau) and the Canadian Federation for the Humanities and Social Sciences (to be determined). They are joined by representatives from the Canadian humanities and social sciences community, namely Rory McGreal (co-editor of the International Review of Research in Open and Distributed Learning) and Lise Larocque (editor of the Canadian Social Work Review / Revue canadienne de service social).

Echoing the recent Jussieu Call, Coalition Publi.ca is part of an international movement striving to redefine the power relations within scholarly publishing in order to support the free circulation of knowledge in the context of the transition towards open access and as new research perspectives are developed in HSS.

To find out more about Coalition Publi.ca: https://www.coalition-publi.ca/

Contact : info@coalition-publi.ca

About Érudit:
Érudit disseminates scholarly and cultural publications in the humanities and social sciences in digital format. Érudit is an interuniversity consortium comprised of Université de Montréal, Université Laval and Université du Québec à Montréal and is funded by the Fonds de recherche du Québec – Société et culture. In 2014, it was recognized as a Major Scientific Initiative by the Canada Foundation for Innovation. https://www.erudit.org

About PKP:
The Public Knowledge Project (PKP) is a non-profit research initiative steered by Simon Fraser University and Stanford University. It aims to provide free access to publicly-funded research. In support of open access, PKP develops open software and publishing services through community engagement. The open and free software suite created by PKP, namely the Open Journal Systems tool, is used by over 10 000 scholarly journals worldwide. https://pkp.sfu.ca/