Coalition Publica welcomes the new policy’s recognition of diamond open access, community-led publishing and open infrastructure as essential parts of Canada’s research ecosystem, and looks forward to working with its partners to support its implementation.
On October 5, Canada’s three federal research funding agencies (CIHR, NSERC and SSHRC) released the new Tri-Agency Open Access Policy on Publications. The policy will require peer-reviewed articles resulting from grants and Chair awards awarded on or after January 1, 2027, to be openly available at the time of publication.
A policy shaped through community consultation
Since the process began in 2023, Coalition Publica has been actively engaged in the review of the policy. We supported the move toward immediate open access and, in our response to the draft policy in 2025, made recommendations to strengthen the role of diamond open access and Canada’s existing open scholarly publishing infrastructure.
We appreciate the extensive consultation undertaken by the Agencies and are encouraged to see several concerns raised by Coalition Publica and others across the scholarly communication community reflected in the final policy.
Recognizing a diverse and community-led open access ecosystem
One particularly important development is the policy’s explicit recognition of diamond OA, community-led publishing and open infrastructure in creating an equitable and sustainable research ecosystem.
We also welcome the recognition of trusted Canadian platforms as a pathway for making funded research openly available, building on infrastructure already used by Canadian researchers and journals. The inclusion of Érudit and the Public Knowledge Project as trusted Canadian platforms affirms our longstanding commitment to building a fairer publishing ecosystem and the importance of sovereign digital research infrastructure.
The policy also recognizes the importance of research in French and of sharing knowledge in languages relevant to the communities it serves, as well as the importance of sharing research by and with Indigenous rights-holders in culturally relevant ways.
Finally, we appreciate the recognition of institutional open access strategies and the role of academic libraries in supporting open access. The transition to immediate open access is a collective effort involving researchers, journals, libraries, institutions, funders and research infrastructures.
From policy to implementation
How immediate open access is achieved will remain important. Article processing charges (APCs) can create barriers for researchers and institutions and reinforce reliance on large commercial publishers. The recognition of diamond open access is therefore significant, and we will continue to follow how community-led and no-fee publishing pathways are supported as the policy is implemented. We strongly endorse the accompanying Tri-Agency Statement Strengthening Open Access to Canadian Research Publications that commits to strengthening Canada’s diamond OA ecosystem and further commits to responsible research assessment beyond prestige-based publishing metrics.
Canada is well positioned to draw on its existing strengths in non-profit scholarly publishing. Its established network of university-based publishing services, scholarly journals, library-supported platforms, and publicly funded research infrastructure provides a solid foundation. Thanks to programs supporting scholarly journals and infrastructure investments from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC), the Canada Foundation for Innovation (CFI), the Fonds de recherche du Québec (FRQ), and academic libraries, Canada has fostered a robust ecosystem that supports a more equitable and sustainable approach to scholarly communication. These existing community-led initiatives will be essential to turning the policy’s ambitions into practice.
Coalition Publica looks forward to contributing to this next phase. We’re honoured to stand alongside many valued colleagues including Canada’s library publishers and journals, Scholars Portal Journals, the Canadian Association of Research Libraries and the Canadian Research Knowledge Network. Together with our partners and the broader scholarly communication community, we will continue to support Canadian journals and researchers as they adapt to the new policy, strengthen interoperability between publishing and repository infrastructure, and expand opportunities for diamond open access publishing.
About Coalition Publica
Coalition Publica is a partnership created by Érudit and the Public Knowledge Project (PKP) dedicated to the advancement of research dissemination and digital publishing in the humanities and social sciences in Canada, specifically designed to support the HSS community in the transition towards sustainable open access. Coalition Publica is pursuing this goal through the development of a non-commercial, open source national infrastructure dedicated to digital scholarly publishing, dissemination, and research—combining PKP’s Open Journal Systems (OJS) software and Érudit’s digital dissemination platform (erudit.org).
