History of CRKN
Working with librarians, researchers, administrators, funders, and publishers, CRKN has engaged stakeholders in innovative projects and initiatives, transformed the research environment by improving access to content in Canadian universities, and influenced the marketplace by reducing licensing costs for CRKN members. CRKN’s inclusive and large-scale approach to content licensing continues to deliver value to its member universities, and its model is considered a best practice internationally.
CRKN History
1999
In the late 1990s, the Canadian Association of Research Libraries (CARL) and Canada's four regional library consortia (CAUL, BCI, OCUL and COPPUL) were encouraged to approach the Canada Foundation for Innovation (CFI) for support by demonstrating that systematic access to published research was an essential component of Canada's research infrastructure.
In June of 1999, following months of collaboration, the Canadian National Site Licensing Project (CNSLP) was created with the support of 64 Canadian universities, and CFI awarded $20 million to CNSLP to support this component of research infrastructure. Participating universities and provincial governments committed an additional $30 million, and the University of Ottawa acted as the project host and administrative centre.
CNSLP’s goal was to bolster the research and innovation capacity of Canada’s universities by licensing electronic versions of scholarly publications on a national scale.
The objectives of CNSLP were three-fold:
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Building capacity: to increase the quantity, breadth and depth of scholarly content available to academic researchers throughout Canada, thereby building a rich and multi-disciplinary milieu to underpin world-class research;
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Transforming the research environment: to speed the transition from print-based to digital and value-added forms of scholarly content, thereby maximizing the use and utility of that content for researchers;
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Influencing the marketplace: to leverage Canadian universities' buying power and influence in the international scholarly publishing marketplace, achieving advantageous terms and conditions for usage and developing new business and service models.
In short order, an Executive Director was hired, and a Steering Committee and other committees (including the Negotiations Resource Team, now the Content Strategy Committee) were developed to direct the licensing process.
2001
By January 2001, the first CNSLP site licenses are activated for STM e-journals. During its pilot phase, CNSLP focused primarily on full-text electronic journals and research databases in science, engineering, health and environmental disciplines—areas where the needs and costs were most acute.
As a result of project funding, CNSLP implemented multi-year licenses with seven major scientific publishers, providing access to over 1,000 e-journals and key citation databases for researchers nationwide. The consortium was also successful in establishing a “made-in-Canada” model license agreement, which set favourable terms of usage for the academic community.
During this period, the CNSLP project was hailed for its innovative approach to advancing research in Canada, winning the 2001 CAUBO Productivity and Leadership First Prize, and the 2002 CACUL Innovation Award. CNSLP's Executive Director, Deb deBruijn, was also honoured with the 2001 CARL/ABRC Award of Merit.
2004
Leveraging the organizational base and critical mass that had been established, CNSLP continued to add high-impact collections of journals and backfiles to the content portfolio, self-funded by members. By 2004, the consortium had more than doubled its initial content budget, demonstrated its impact on the research community, and met sustainability requirements from CFI.
As more content was licensed, additional staff were hired, and the structure of the project became more formalized. In April 2004, the Canadian Research Knowledge Network was incorporated as a not-for-profit organization. At this point, a Board of Directors was formed, replacing the CNSLP Steering Committee.
2005
Conscious of the growing need for digital content in social sciences and humanities disciplines, CRKN began planning, in 2005, for a three-phase content expansion project that would secure a portfolio of content in diverse formats and culminate with another approach to CFI for grant funding.
2007
In February 2007, CFI announced an award under its National Platforms Fund for the Digital Content Infrastructure for the Human and Social Sciences (DCI) project – a further $19.1 million to be matched by 67 member institutions and provincial governments. As before, this award would be granted through the University of Ottawa.
In December 2007, CRKN moved from the University of Ottawa to new premises.
2008
By June 2008, fourteen major research collections had been secured under the DCI project, making available thousands of e-books, e-journals, primary source materials, videos, classical music scores, and more. In 2009, CRKN committed the remaining DCI content funds toward digitization of select Canadian social sciences and humanities (SSH) collections at the University of Toronto and the University of Alberta.
At this point, CRKN had grown to 75 members, managed 45 licenses and funds in excess of $100 million annually and licensed a full complement of digital content in STM and SSH disciplines. While CFI had provided critical seed funding to accelerate strategic initiatives and to ensure inclusive and equitable participation, member institutions remained committed to sustaining initiatives through voluntary funding.
2010
In 2010, a Governance Review recommended significant changes to the size and composition of CRKN's Board of Directors, which had remained largely unchanged since the inception of CNSLP in 2000.
2012
In December 2012, CRKN hired Clare Appavoo, the organization's second Executive Director.
2013
During 2013, CRKN contracted with staff at two other international library consortia to conduct an External Review of the organization's negotiation effectiveness. Overall, the external reviewers found that CRKN is an effective and efficient representative for its members, achieving excellent cost control that generally matches or exceeds comparable consortia.
2018
CRKN completed its merger with Canadiana.org, expanding its mandate to include digitization, preservation, and access to millions of pages of documentary heritage, and in early 2019 removed the paywall to the full Canadiana collections, making 60 million pages freely accessible.
The organization advanced major licensing negotiations, supported national open access initiatives including Érudit and Coalition Publi.ca, and expanded membership to include Library and Archives Canada, Bibliothèque et Archives nationales du Québec, and the Toronto Public Library.
CRKN also launched extensive consultations to shape its 2019–2024 Strategic Plan and added significant new digitization, metadata, and preservation capacity through the creation of the Preservation and Access Committee and related task groups.
2019
CRKN launched its 2019–2024 Strategic Plan and began implementing key initiatives focused on transforming scholarly communication, strengthening partnerships, and expanding collaborative advocacy across the research community.
2020–21
CRKN achieved landmark progress in scholarly communications by convening a Stakeholder Alignment group which brought together senior leaders from across Canada’s research ecosystem—representing universities, funding agencies, and research organizations—to demonstrate national unity in support of sustainable, transparent, and open scholarly communication. This initiative helped CRKN secure major cost reductions in the Elsevier renewal—a 12.5% cost reduction (resulting in cumulative savings of 29.5 million USD over six years).
Despite the challenges of COVID-19, CRKN maintained full operations, supported member needs, and expanded its role in national research infrastructure through DataCite Canada Consortium administration and continued enhancement of preservation platforms.
2023
CRKN advanced major open access transformation by securing a cost-neutral transformative agreement with Wiley—projected to make over 4,000 Canadian-authored articles open access—and expanding Canadian-led OA publishing through new agreements with Canadian Science Publishing and the University of Toronto Press, while extending its longstanding partnership with Érudit.
CRKN also deepened national leadership in persistent identifiers, securing renewed funding from the Digital Research Alliance of Canada, welcoming the Fonds de recherche du Québec to ORCID-CA, and progressing toward a national PID strategy supporting an interconnected open scholarship ecosystem.
2024–25
In 2024–2025, CRKN delivered major impact by negotiating over $157M in collective licensing, saving members $42.9M and enabling more than 15,400 open-access publications. We expanded and modernized the Canadiana and Héritage collections, added nearly 300,000 new pages, and advanced national PID infrastructure with significant growth in ORCID and DataCite participation.
Annual Reports
Learn more about CRKN's progress each year by reading our annual reports.
History of Canadiana
CRKN merged with Canadiana in 2018; however, Canadiana has a long and rich history dating all the way back to 1969!