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About Scholaris

Last modified by Julia Gilmore on 2026-07-20, 11:39

Scholaris is an opt-in Canadian shared repository service that provides hosted infrastructure and support for Canadian institutional repositories. The service is hosted and managed by Scholars Portal, and developed by the Canadian Association of Research Libraries (CARL), the Ontario Council of University Libraries (OCUL), University of Toronto Libraries (UTL), regional consortia, expert groups and members of the Canadian institutional repository community. 

Participating institutions receive an institutionally branded DSpace instance and Scholars Portal provides migration support, on-going technical support, regular upgrades, maintenance, and access to documentation and community-developed resources. Institutions have flexibility to customize their instances to meet their repository needs, so long as the customizations are supported within the Scholaris service model and by DSpace. 

scholaris.ca

Planting the seeds for Scholaris

From the Call for Early Adopters (distributed March 2024): 

After separately investigating the feasibility of scalable, shared institutional repository infrastructure, the Canadian Association of Research Libraries (CARL), the Ontario Council of University Libraries (OCUL), and the University of Toronto Libraries (UTL) signed a memorandum of understanding in November 2023 to work together in the development of a national repository service. University of Toronto Libraries (UTL) agreed to act as the service provider through Scholars Portal.  

The vision

The development of a national shared repository service provides an opportunity to leverage existing expertise and modernize approaches to technical service delivery to support the repository community and increase the discovery of Canadian scholarship. By joining Scholaris, repository teams enjoy a local, institutional branded repository instance that benefits from regular upgrades, maintenance, reporting and troubleshooting, and shared repository expertise, resources, documentation, and communities of practice.

Each participating institution receives their own DSpace instances (dev and prod), and the parallel instances are hosted and managed by the Scholaris technical team through a centralized service delivery model. This model has been designed to allow for efficiencies with common integrations and service delivery, while still allowing flexibility and autonomy, where desired, at the institutional level.
 

Technical and community infrastructure for Scholaris

Technical InfrastructureCommunity Infrastructure
  • Parallel, institutionally-branded DSpace instances
  • Ongoing technical support and maintenance
  • Ongoing DSpace software upgrades
  • Canadian data hosting
  • Persistent identifiers (Handles, option for DOI registration) 

Governance

  • CARL, Shared Repository Infrastructure Advisory Committee (SRIAC) (Terms of Reference)
  • SRIAC is the de facto governing body for Scholaris and meets 3-4 times per year to provide CARL Directors and those working on the service with guidance and recommendations

More information

Presentations

  • June 2026 (Open Repositories) - Shared Knowledge, Shared Progress: Building a Shared Repository Service with a Network of Experts (Slides)
  • May 2026 (CRKN Conference) - Building Scholaris Together: Reflections from Developing a Shared Repository Service through an Early Adopter Program and a Network of Experts (Slides)
  • December 2025 (Northeast Institutional Repository Day) - Learning As We Go, Go, Go: Reflections from Developing and Delivering an Early Adopter Program for a Shared Repository Service in Canada (Slides)
     
  • January 2025 - Scholaris Information Session (Slides, Recording)
  • September 2024 - Scholaris Information Session (Slides, Recording)
  • May 2024 - Introduction to Scholaris at Scholars Portal Days (Slides, Recording)

Early Adopter Program

In Spring 2024, Scholaris launched a two-year Early Adopter Program to develop the service. Including a brief pilot project prior to the start of the program, 28 Canadian academic institutions joined and/or migrated to Scholaris infrastructure. This included two institutions without prior institutional repostories, institutions operating in English and French, and across Canada, and from a variety of repostory platforms (DSpace, as well as Digital Commons/BePress, Islandora, Samvera/Hyrax, Figshare, and custom solutions). 

Expert Groups

The CARL Network of Expert Groups provide specialized guidance and recommendations on key areas of service development. The following expert groups were established in 2024 and served a two year term:

Planned service development

To be shaped through our work with participating institutions, advisory and expert groups, and the broader repository community:

  • Service roles and responsibilities (for SP, at local level).
  • ‘Out of box’ service offering; optional supported customizations and integrations.
  • Bilingual service offering
  • Preservation service offering
  • Use cases for development of custom applications, tools, code contribution, etc.

Responsibilities

Scholars Portal will provide reliable technical hosting, security measures, monitoring, and technical support in line with other services currently being offered, with the potential for integrating digital preservation and other services/workflows, as beneficial to participating organizations.

A governance and financial sustainability plan will be developed by CARL in collaboration with regional consortia and the Shared Repository Infrastructure Advisory Committee (SRIAC). CARL will also support some expert groups to provide technical and operational input in key areas.