cIRcle Blog

Whistleblower Suit: APCs and Alleged Fraud

Gavel CC 0 Four Major Publishers Named in U.S. Federal Lawsuit A recent U.S. whistleblower lawsuit involving publishers and article processing charges is drawing a lot of attention in the open access and scholarly publishing communities. In late July 2026, Retraction Watch, a well-known and respected blog in the scientific and academic communities, published a […]

Persistent Identifiers in cIRcle

Illustration by Vicki Hamilton, courtesy of Pixabay What are Persistent Identifiers? A persistent identifier (PID) is a unique code that identifies and links an entity (a person, place, or thing) across global digital infrastructures. PIDs are important to digital repositories like cIRcle because they support long-term identification and accessibility, directing a user to a source […]

cIRcle Impact & Activity Report 2025-2026

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 […]

Explore cIRcle: Oral Histories on Punjabi History and Language

Marigolds in the Market © Ted McGrath CC BY-NC-SA 2.0 cIRcle holds many grant-funded and student works on oral histories of the Punjabi language and history. These items primarily contain footage of professionals, academics, and everyday citizens sharing their stories and knowledge on a variety of topics, such as the past and present Punjabi community […]

New in cIRcle: “Academic Podcasting: A Handbook for Knowledge Exchange and Mobilization”

Photo by Austin Distel, courtesy of Unsplash A new work has been added to cIRcle: Academic Podcasting: A Handbook for Knowledge Exchange. This handbook discusses podcasts as an effective way of making academic research results sharable, digestible, and accessible. It shares tips and tricks for individuals in the scholarly community who want to create their […]

cIRcle Metadata: Why Does it Matter?

Stacks © Edna Winti CC BY 2.0 Metadata is known as “data about data,” or descriptive information about an object to help make it discoverable and usable, among many other features. When scholarly material is deposited to cIRcle, the metadata is essential for making that content findable not only within Open Collections, but also on […]

Explore cIRcle: Undergraduate Research Projects in Environmental Science

UBC Pacific Spirit Park © Philip Jeffrey CC BY-NC-SA 2.0 ENVR 400 Community Project in Environmental Science is a project-based course in UBC’s Department of Earth, Ocean and Atmospheric sciences. This course gives students the opportunity to work hands-on with community organizations on an environmental science project, gaining collaborative field experience and producing valuable research […]