Photo courtesy UBC Brand
Have you ever wondered what a year in the life of a repository looks like? The cIRcle team is excited to share our 2025-2026 Impact and Activity Report—a glimpse into the projects, partnerships, and priorities that defined our progress.
Read on for highlights from the report to learn more about how we’re celebrating UBC’s strengths and supporting academic excellence.
Emerging and alternative formats
Over 90,000 scholarly works in cIRcle are free to access from anywhere in the world via Open Collections. In recent years, a notable increase in complex and diverse submissions has been a powerful indicator of how rapidly the technological and academic landscape is evolving. UBC’s theses and dissertations exemplify this trend: in 2025, more than 5% of thesis and dissertation submissions to cIRcle included non-textual materials compared to just over 2% in 2021.
What’s new in cIRcle?
New and long-standing project partners bring breadth and diversity to cIRcle’s collections. A unique addition this year is the Slocan History Series, a collection of booklets exploring the history of the Slocan Valley. cIRcle also expanded its large collection of Mining Engineering conference papers with a selection from the 5th annual International Conference on Mine Water Solutions.
This year’s collection highlights also included several knowledge mobilization projects connecting UBC faculty, researchers, and students with community partners and community-centered initiatives. Through the UBC SHARE (Students Harnessing Academic Research for Exchange) Project, academic research about Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside was made easy to access and understand through infographics. Students in ENVR 400 Community Project in Environmental Science work with local partners to research real-world environmental issues and investigate and propose solutions. The Centre for European Studies (CES) Community Engagement Podcast series brings together scholars, activists, and experts in thought-provoking conversations on Europe’s politics, society, culture, and its connections to the world.
Learn tips on finding more content like this in our blog post: Alternative Research Outputs in cIRcle.
Project spotlight
cIRcle’s biggest project this year has been preparing for the exciting migration to DSpace 9. After an extensive planning and technical solutions process, the cIRcle Office progressed to testing how our content, workflows, and customizations behave in the latest version of the open-source repository software. An important step in this process has been a systematic review and refresh of cIRcle support documentation, including all relevant user guides on our website featuring submission and content management instructions.
Meanwhile, we’ve continued to create resources for UBC researchers interested in open access publishing via the repository. The Get Started with cIRcle : Green Open Access blog post brings together information from across the Library’s research support services with a focus on grant-funding recipients. The wiki guide, UBC Theses and Dissertations : Open Access and Embargo Considerations, aims to help graduate students answer pressing questions about the world of open access, Creative Commons licensing, and how open sharing of their theses and dissertations can support future publication.
Keeping up with cIRcle
No need to wait for our next annual Impact and Activity Report to find out what we’re working on. Visit the cIRcle blog for regular updates on our projects, new content, and more!
You can also find cIRcle news via UBC Library social media channels including Instagram @ubclibrary, Facebook, and LinkedIn.
