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This Mois de la francophonie, discover how the Library supports French-language knowledge creation and Francophone culture at the University of Ottawa. In the third article in this series, we explore open science and knowledge dissemination in French.

Did you know that Francophonie is one of the six core values of the University of Ottawa Library? In our 2025–2030 Strategic Plan, we’ve committed to supporting the creation, dissemination and celebration of French-language knowledge, as well as Francophone cultural expression. 

In this series of articles, we’ll look at different practical initiatives carried out by the Library in the following areas: 

  • Support of teaching with open educational resources in French
  • Development of French-language collections
  • Open science and knowledge dissemination in French
  • Support services in French
  • The Library as a hub for Francophone culture on campus

Part 3: Open science and knowledge dissemination in French

As the ACFAS indicated in its report Portraits et défis de la recherche en français en contexte minoritaire au Canada (2021), researchers wishing to publish in French face numerous challenges. 

That’s why we’ve committed in our 2025–2030 Strategic Plan to “[a]dvance the development of open access journals, open educational resources, and community-engaged scholarship originally conceived in French, reinforcing the Library’s role in sustaining Francophone academic and intellectual life.” This strategic goal supports the Transformation 2030 “More connected” pillar, which aims to “[r]einforce and promote scholarly dissemination in French, including through the promotion of Open Access publishing,” as well as the recommendations of the Open Science Roadmap: Report by the Open Science Working Group, University of Ottawa, published in fall 2024.

In practical terms, this commitment takes different forms, such as providing infrastructure for open access publishing. This is the case with uO Research, the University’s institutional repository, which includes over 30,000 different items, including theses and research papers, articles and preprints, books and book chapters, book reviews, datasets, posters, conference papers, reports, images, working papers and even software and multimedia items. 

Managed by the Library, uO Research is the University of Ottawa's digital archive. It provides open, permanent access to uOttawa scholarship. 

uO Research also hosts works published in the University of Ottawa Press’s open access  Collection. Through this program, you can now access over 100 eBooks for free online, including 47 titles published in French or in both official languages.

In addition to the University repository, we provide hosting and publishing services for uOttawa-based journals on the Open Journal Systems platform. These community-based journals allow for our researchers’ voices to be amplified, including those exploring bilingualism and Francophonie. We also host several faculty and student-run journals, including a dozen of French-language or bilingual publications.

Finally, the uOttawa Library is one of six Champion libraries contributing to the Partnership for Open Access(POA). Established in 2014 by Érudit, in collaboration with the Canadian Research Knowledge Network, the POA provides financial support to over 280 Canadian non-commercial scholarly journalspublished in either English or French. POA-funded journals include @nalyses, Francophonies d’Amérique, Mens, Cahiers Charlevoix, Reflet : Revue d’intervention sociale et communautaire, Minorités linguistiques et société, and the Ottawa Law Review / Revue de droit d’Ottawa. 

This support is made possible through the sustained commitment of the partner libraries funding the POA. As a Champion library, we also make an extra contribution to the Open Access Acceleration Fund, in addition to our regular Canadian Research Knowledge Network fees, adding up to over $50,000 a year. These contributions allow us to increase the financial support provided to diamond open access journals on the Érudit platform. 

Don’t miss the next article in this series, on support services in French. 

Find out more