Elevating Open Access and Useability: Scholarship@Western's Transition to Scholaris
Published on March 24, 2025
Western Libraries has joined the new national shared repository service, Scholaris. This means that the institutional repository, Scholarship@Western will be migrating to a new platform. It will move from its current bepress/Digital Commons platform to a Scholaris-hosted DSpace instance, supported by Scholars Portal by July 7, 2025.
The repository will be more tightly focused on making open access content publicly available. The new repository’s name and URL will soon be announced.
What is Scholaris and why is Western migrating to this new platform?
Scholaris is an opt-in shared repository service that that provides a robust, scalable infrastructure for shared institutional repositories across Canada. 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.
This critical shift represents a significant opportunity for Western to help shape the direction of shared repository infrastructure in Canada and work with our OCUL and CARL partners on implementing a cost-effective repository platform that aligns with our core values of openness and transparency. By making this transition, we are taking a bold step away from for-profit models that dominate scholarly communication, particularly moving away from the Elsevier-owned bepress Digital Commons to a robust open-source platform.
By adopting the open-source repository software DSpace, Scholaris also ensures reliable technical hosting, security measures, and comprehensive support services. The Western community will also benefit from a new streamlined interface with a refined collections hierarchy.
How will this migration impact the Western community?
All new submissions to Scholarship@Western will stop effective Friday, May 16, 2025, to facilitate a smooth transition. We will resume submissions to the new platform in early July 2025.
For those wishing to submit work during this period, please send your documents to rsclib@uwo.ca, and our team will ensure they are uploaded post-migration.
Does this include Electronic Theses and Dissertation Submissions?
This suspension does NOT apply to Electronic Theses and Dissertations (ETDs) or Dissertations in Practice submissions. Western's School of Graduate and Postdoctoral Studies (SGPS) will continue to post content to the repository, and this will not affect any student’s ability to graduate. If you are a graduate student and you have any questions, please contact thesis@uwo.ca.
Will all Scholarship@Western content be migrated to the new platform?
The new repository’s scope will be more tightly focused on making open access content publicly available.
Other content, such as image archives or digital scholarship projects, will be moved to alternative platforms but will remain accessible on Scholarship@Western until mid-2026. We will share more information on other platforms as it becomes available to us.
If you are an administrator of a collection in the current Scholarship@Western platform, we will be in touch soon with information about training opportunities in the new system.
What are the next steps?
We will be sharing additional project milestones and updates as we move closer to our go live date, July 7, 2025. We appreciate your support and patience during this transition.
Please direct any questions, comments, or concerns about the repository migration to the Research & Scholarly Communications Team at rsclib@uwo.ca .
