Love Data Week is an international celebration of data first established in 2016 with the aim of promoting good research data management strategies, sharing data success stories, and raising awareness about data equity and inclusion. MRU Library joins the celebration from February 10 to 14, 2025 and our librarians have gathered a breadth of resources organized through five core themes for our community to explore.
Lost & Found: Who Controls Cultural Data?
Data sovereignty and Indigenous, historical, and community data
Data for Good and Data for Evil
Stories of data used for justice and/or exploitation
The Algorithm Made Me Do It
How AI and algorithms shape our lives
DIY Data: Take Control of Your Info
Empowering people to manage, protect, and use their own data
Data in Action: Tools & Know-How
Practical skills and training
Further Reading:
This article is the first in a planned series on the San Francisco Declaration on Research Assessment (DORA). We will be exploring the importance of its principles, their alignment with MRU values, and how its guidance can support our efforts, while also examining what committing to DORA means for the MRU community in striving towards these goals.
"Sketch of Sharing Knowledge and Lessons Learned" by Lucia Obst (WMDE), is licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0.
DORA brings together resources, ideas, and practices that strengthen research assessment practices, advocating for a shift away from traditional metrics for assessing individual research efforts, such as the flawed focus on journal impact factor, toward recognizing the actual contributions and societal impacts of research.
Over 3,300 organizations have committed to DORA globally, including 60+ Canadian organizations such as the Canadian Association of University Teachers (CAUT), the universities of Montreal, Calgary and Victoria, and major funders like NSERC, SSHRC, CIHR, Genome Canada, the Canada Foundation for Innovation (CFI), and many more. This reflects a national shift toward more inclusive metrics and assessment that better capture the quality and impact of Canadian research.
With International Open Access Week recently behind us, we’ve been reflecting on the many connections between open access (OA) and DORA. Researchers, writers, and peer reviewers advance knowledge, often funded by public dollars, yet much of that work remains locked behind paywalls—limiting access to quality information for other researchers, policymakers, educators, and the public.
Together, open access and DORA foster a system where research has greater impact. For Mount Royal researchers and community, this raises key questions:
How much further could our work go if it were accessible to everyone?
How can we maximize the reach of our work if access is restricted?
How can we increase access in ways that are both effective and sustainable?
The Declaration on Research Assessment expands the conversation about reforming how research is evaluated and/while OA publishing supports this shift, making research freely available, increasing both visibility and impact. Together, DORA and OA publishing create a more inclusive and equitable research environment and broaden dissemination of knowledge.
Canada's federal funders are reviewing the Tri-Agency Open Access Policy on Publications to ensure peer-reviewed publications from publicly funded research are freely available at the time of publication, with updates expected by the end of 2025. This step will make Canadian research more accessible globally. We expect that the updated policy will still require funded authors to publish open access versions of their works. MRU has long valued evaluating research based on its real-world contributions, and together we are engaging in conversations to reaffirm this commitment and to ensure our institution aligns with the goals of both OA and DORA.
Online publication offers opportunities unavailable to print publication, such as adopting diverse formats, greater accessibility, enhanced global reach, and access equity. Open access publishing pushes this development further by making research outputs freely accessible to everyone, treating them as a public good. Open access puts impactful research into the hands of information users faster and in more formats than traditional publications. By sharing open scholarship outputs like datasets, computing code, and educational resources, OA drives innovation, entrepreneurship, and societal improvements. DORA itself calls us to “capitalize on the opportunities provided by online publication,” and OA helps us meet this challenge.
This means the MRU community needs to have frank, ongoing discussion about the merits (and flaws) of OA publishing. For example, OA journals are still frequently perceived as being of lower quality when compared to most traditional subscription journals, despite the evidence showing how legitimate open scholarly publications have highly impactful real-world benefits (e.g., Besançon et al, 2021). Open publishing can increase audience perceptions of research trustworthiness, including by public audiences (Song et al., 2022) who recognize open science is a public good, and ideally counteract the current climate of fake news and misinformation. While traditional research impact assessment has focused only on citation metrics, OA articles are viewed, downloaded, and cited more often than subscription resources (White et al., 2024), and when taken together these measures provide a more wholistic picture of a publication’s research impact, and demonstrate that open publications have reach extending further than their subscription counterparts. Focusing on what the research tells us, rather than on the journal where the research appears, will broaden the appeal of open access while meeting DORA refinements. And since OA publications are nearly always online-only (or at least online first), they can go beyond the limitations of print, incorporating interactive elements and multimedia, while avoiding publishing barriers such as fees for page counts or colour images.
Open publishing and open scholarship foster transparency, reduce barriers, and address inequities in access and inclusion. By emphasising the content and value of the work, rather than where it was published, processes like merit review, tenure and promotion decisions, and awards and grant evaluations are democratised. This approach also encourages thoughtful conversations on properly crediting all project contributors – not just authors – supported by tools like the Contributor Role Taxonomy (CRedit) being adopted by publishers, funders, and institutions.
Discussions around research impact assessment, the DORA principles, and open access present opportunities to strengthen those activities where scholarship assessment is part of the process.
For the institution, this means:
Investing in resources, education, and infrastructure that support open scholarship initiatives;
Codifying open access as a valued publication model in research assessment practices.
For researchers, this means:
Prioritising open publishing, including contributing versions of your work to an open repository.
Exploring alternative, open forms of research dissemination such as datasets, digital archives, infographics, policy briefs, podcasts, webinars, preprints, and educational resources, and promoting those as complementary contributions to your overall research portfolio.
For MRU as a community, this means:
Promoting a shared commitment to open access values and principles as a cornerstone of equitable and impactful research.
We look forward to participating as Mount Royal engages in the important conversations about sustainable and ethical research dissemination. We can reflect on what this means for us, explore opportunities to adopt and refine our practices, and work together to develop a shared understanding of open access and equitable research assessment.
The DORA Movement in Canada: Working Together to Advance Assessment of Research Excellence
Library Open at MRU resources
Besançon, L., Peiffer-Smadja, N., Segalas, C., Jiang, H., Masuzzo, P., Smout, C., Billy, E., Deforet, M., & Leyrat, C. (2021). Open science saves lives: Lessons from the COVID-19 pandemic. BMC Medical Research Methodology, 21(1), 117-117. https://doi.org/10.1186/s12874-021-01304-y
Song, H., Markowitz, D. M., & Taylor, S. H. (2022). Trusting on the shoulders of open giants? Open science increases trust in science for the public and academics. Journal of Communication, 72(4), 497–510. https://doi.org/10.1093/joc/jqac017
White, N., Mein, L., Neubeiser, K., Peck, L., Junge, K., Eassom, H, & Debiec-Waszak, A. (2024). Demonstrating the advantage of publishing open access with Wiley [White paper]. John Wiley & Sons, Inc. https://www.wiley.com/en-us/network/publishing/research-publishing/open-access/demonstrating-the-advantage-of-publishing-open-access-with-wiley
Contributors:
Richard Hayman is Associate Professor and Digital Initiatives Librarian with the MRU Library and is a local expert for open access. He is the current administrator of the Library OA Fund and the Library’s OA ejournal publishing program, sits on two national groups promoting open publishing, and has research and professional interests that include scholarly communications, educational technologies, and evidence-based practice. All of his scholarly publications are available via open access.
Francine May is an Associate Professor with the MRU Library and currently serves as Associate Dean responsible for collections and research. She oversees the library's strategic approach to collections, including supporting open access through resource selection, budget allocation, and initiatives that promote equitable access to scholarly materials. Francine's professional interests include scholarly communication, library budgeting, and the intersection of collections and research.
Joel Blechinger | Posted September 19, 2024
As support mounts for citing more diverse voices in academia as part of the movement for citation justice, the Library has helped develop new guidance for citing Indigenous Elders and Knowledge Keepers. This work was done in collaboration with Student Learning Services, Mount Royal Faculty Association’s Indigenous Faculty Collective, and Roy Bear Chief, espoom tah (helper) with the Faculty of Health, Community and Education. The templates are adapted from Lorisia MacLeod’s citation templates with the aim of increasing the visibility of and reverence for knowledge shared by Indigenous Elders and Knowledge Keepers.
In 2021, MacLeod, a librarian from James Smith Cree Nation, published an influential set of citation templates in her article “More Than Personal Communication: Templates for Citing Indigenous Elders and Knowledge Keepers.” MacLeod’s intervention—via the creation of citation templates for Indigenous Elders and Knowledge Keepers—was to work against the devaluation of Indigenous oral teachings, which had historically been treated as “personal communication” according to the official style guides of the American Psychological Association (APA), the Modern Language Association (MLA), and in The Chicago Manual of Style (CMOS).
In APA and CMOS, personal communication is typically treated as unretrievable information, and, therefore, it is not given an entry in a reference list. According to MacLeod, “to use the template for personal communication is to place an Indigenous oral teaching on the same footing as a quick phone call, giving it only a short in-text citation (as is the standard with personal communication citations) while even tweets are given a reference citation” (p. 2). In contrast, citing Indigenous oral teachings using MacLeod’s templates acknowledges the teachings as “an equal and valid information format alongside familiar formats like books and journals” (p. 3).
When MacLeod published her article in 2021, her templates had already been adapted by twenty-five institutions across Canada and the United States, and even more organizations have done so since.
Since the publication of MacLeod's article, MLA has developed guidance to cite Indigenous oral knowledge based on her work. The Chicago Manual Style, which as of this year is in its 18th edition, likewise has adapted MacLeod's templates in section “14.137: Citing Indigenous sources of knowledge directly.” While we await updates to APA for its official guidance on how to cite Indigenous Elders and Knowledge Keepers, we have adapted MacLeod’s APA templates for use at MRU.
Check out MRU’s guidance on citing Indigenous Elders and Knowledge Keepers in the following resources:
MRU Guide to APA Style for Referencing (2024-2025): See “Citing Indigenous Knowledge Keepers” on page 9 and citation example G2 on page 14.
MRU Guide to MLA Style for Referencing (2024-2025): See “Citing Indigenous Elders, Knowledge Keepers, and Community Members” on page 3 and citation example F1 on page 18.
MRU Guide to Chicago Style for Referencing, 18th edition (2024-25): See citation example E3 on page 11.
For more information on MacLeod’s citation template project, check out this interview with her published by ACRLog in 2022.
Adam Cohen and Jules de Guzman | Posted July 10, 2024
Libraries around the world are trying to find solutions to deal with a catalogue of materials that have historically been described using outdated and problematic terms. This is compounded by the difficulties of utilising subject vocabularies, like Library of Congress Subject Headings (an internationally accepted subject vocabulary) which has been maintained by predominantly white, cisgender, and heterosexual people. Between these factors and the glacial pace with which changes can be made to the vocabulary, it has become outdated in subject areas that deal with such topics as Indigenous Peoples, disability, and the focus of this article, the 2SLGBTQIA+ community.
As an example of how Library of Congress Subject Headings are out of step with the vocabulary used by 2SLGBTQIA+ community members, we just need to look at the umbrella term used: “Sexual minorities.” This term is problematic in a number of ways. First, it conflates sexuality with gender, erasing gender-diverse and trans identities. So even though “LGBTQ people '' is a variant term of “sexual minorities” in the vocabulary, the “T” is being erased by said terminology. Furthermore, “sexual minorities'' is not a term that members of the community would typically use to describe themselves. Why then would a member of the community who is looking for materials by and about queer people choose to search “sexual minorities?” Outdated terminologies like these are a massive problem relating to accessibility for researchers and patrons, and one that we hope to fix with the implementation of the Homosaurus Project.
In order to increase the accessibility of materials by and about queer and trans people, MRU Library has undertaken a project to implement the Homosaurus vocabulary – an international vocabulary of 2SLGBTQIA+ terminology – meant to supplement the existing subject headings already used by libraries and related institutions with respectful terms that describe and affirm the full spectrum of the community’s experience. For example, the Library of Congress has some subject headings that narrow down on queer people from different cultural backgrounds (ie. “Jewish sexual minorities” or “Muslim sexual minorities”) but there are many groups of people that are left out. The implementation of Homosaurus would add new, more specific and accurate terms like “Afro-Latin American LGBTQ+ people '' or “Asian American LGBTQ+ people'' which allows for the Library to create more specific access points to assist those looking for resources.
Implementing a new subject vocabulary is no easy feat. The MRU Library identified over 1000 print books that were either by or about 2SLGBTQIA+ people. The time and effort required to carefully sort through these books and apply the correct terminology is immense and the books identified are certainly not the only books in need of remediation in our catalogue. The MRU Library was able to hire a student, Jules de Guzman, to assist with the implementation of this project.
Jules de Guzman (they/them) started with the library as a student, and is now a recent graduate of Mount Royal University, with a Bachelor of Arts in Sociology, minoring in Creative Writing. They plan to apply for a Master of Information Studies to continue working in libraries and archives, driven by their passion to advocate for the preservation and accessibility of lost and marginalised narratives as a queer/trans second generation Filipinx immigrant.
Jules began their role reading and researching queer cataloguing practices and applying these theories to their approach. Over the past six months, they updated over 1000 books’ descriptions in the collection. In this process, they noticed many gaps in accessing queer and trans knowledge due to lack of updated and inclusive language. They bridged these gaps by applying Homosaurus terminology used by queer and trans communities today while also considering the use of reclaimed terminology and historical contexts. Now, hundreds of books embodying queer and trans research and knowledge are more easily accessible. Jules also compiled a list of terms to suggest Homosaurus add to their vocabulary such as terms like “queer kinship,” contributing to the “living” document that Homosaurus is, much like the individuals within queer and trans communities and libraries themselves.
Now that Homosaurus terms have made their way into the LibrarySearch, prospective researchers will begin seeing specifically labelled Homosaurus terms in the catalogue records of relevant materials.
Clicking on those terms will then search the catalogue for all resources that mention that term as well. This allows patrons to find more information on a specific topic and will also serve to expose patrons to more materials about their topic of interest. Homosaurus will also act as a useful resource to provide researchers with more terminology they can use in their library searches.
Homosaurus: An International LGBTQ+ Linked Data Vocabulary
MRU Library’s 2SLGBTQIA+ Collection
Mount Royal Library Takes on Homosaurus Project
Drabinski, E. (2013). Queering the Catalog: Queer Theory and the Politics of Correction.The Library Quarterly: Information, Community, Policy, 83(2), 94-111. https://www.jstor.org/stable/10.1086/669547
The Trans Metadata Collective, Burns, J., Cronquist, M., Huang, J., Murphy, D., Rawson, K. J., Schaefer, B., Simons, J., Watson, B. M., & Williams, A. (2022). Metadata Best Practices for Trans and Gender Diverse Resources (1.0). Zenodo. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.6686841
Brian Jackson | Posted February 12, 2024
The Inter-University Consortium for Political and Social Research (ICPSR) is a long-standing initiative organized by the Institute for Social Research at the University of Michigan. ICPSR hosts highly-curated, well-documented data collected from a wide range of academic and government sources internationally. On its website, the organization maintains a bibliography of publications stemming from ICPSR data. The number of publications in that list sits at more than 111,000.
While relatively few repositories track secondary use of data, with some digging one can find the occasional study, bibliography, or boast about the impact of open data. A few examples: the US-based National Institutes of Health lists more than 7000 manuscripts citing data from its Database of Genotypes and Phenotypes; the Canadian Research Data Centre Network, which provides restricted access to Statistics Canada data for Canadian researchers, hosts a bibliography of more than 5000 publications using its data; and one study found that just 79 datasets held by the Biologic Specimen and Data Repository Information Coordinating Center were reused in 987 published studies.
None of that is to say that all open datasets will be put to future use - many won’t. But we shouldn’t underestimate the ingenuity of others who may see new questions in our data or combine data in ways yet to be imagined. Sharing research data creates potential. That potential has been realized in some large endeavours such as the massive Human Genome Project, which would not have been possible without data sharing. In fields like astronomy and oral history, open data archiving has been common practice for decades, while other disciplines incorporate norms around collegial data sharing upon request, all with the understanding that research data has value to others.
Even if we think we’ve squeezed all the value out of our own data or that there is no value outside of the original context of data collection, there are other benefits to sharing research data. Open data increases transparency in scientific reporting at a time when expertise is often met with disbelief. Distrust of experts may be amplified by legitimate problems in research, exemplified by the replication crisis which was in part a catalyst for the growth of open science. There is also evidence that publications for which the underlying data is openly shared are cited more frequently. And while the link between open data and publication citations may be as much correlation as causation, what isn’t in doubt is the great feeling that comes from making impactful contributions to the scholarly record.
Plan to make your data open at the start of your research project. Your plan should include details about how you will collect, store, organize, de-identify, and document your data. Consider what other researchers in your field would need to know in order to reuse your data.
Seek broad consent for unspecified future use of your data from research participants. Broad consent for data reuse cannot be a condition of participation.
Choose an appropriate repository. Datasets deposited in the MRU Data Repository are widely discoverable, but there may be other options in your discipline.
Not ready to open your dataset? Consider archiving your dataset in the MRU Data Repository with access restrictions. That way, your data will be preserved securely.
Advocate for the recognition of data sharing activities when research is assessed during tenure and promotion or funding processes.
Contact MRU’s Data Librarian for more information or support.
From February 12-16, 2024, ICPSR will promote events for Love Data Week, a week celebrating data management practices that enhance research. Consider attending Love Data Week events or use the week as a reminder to reach out to learn more about making your data open.
Join Brian Jackson, Data Librarian at MRU Library, for his online workshop “Finding Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion Data” on Thursday, Feb. 15 from 11 to 11:30 a.m. online. Register here.
