This year’s Open Access Week (October 19–25), themed “The Cost of Knowledge,” offers a timely opportunity to consider how we make research available beyond subscription barriers. It also comes as Canada’s federal research funding agencies, CIHR, NSERC, and SSHRC, introduce a revised Tri-Agency Open Access Policy on Publications.
For grants and Chair awards given on or after January 1, 2027, the revised policy requires resulting peer-reviewed research articles to be freely available immediately upon publication, without an embargo, under an open licence. Authors must make their accepted manuscript or published article available in a Canadian institutional repository or through a trusted Canadian platform even when the article is already open access on the publisher’s website.
For Laurentian researchers, this is a good time to review publishing plans, understand author rights, and make repository deposit part of the research workflow. The Library can help you explore open-access publishing options, navigate funder requirements, and share your work through LUZoneUL.
For more information, contact the Library at reference@laurentian.ca or your funding agency: CIHR (access@cihr-irsc.gc.ca), NSERC (openaccess@nserc-crsng.gc.ca), or SSHRC (openaccess@sshrc-crsh.gc.ca).
