The University Archives website has recently been updated and content from the previous version is currently being migrated. During this transition, some pages or resources may be temporarily unavailable.
An archived version of the previous website is available via the Internet Archive’s Wayback Machine here: https://web.archive.org/web/20260119042159/https://archives.library.ubc.ca/
Thank you for your patience during this transition.
We are seeing reports of users seeing blocked access to CPS. We are investigating.
Please use the workaround link here – https://resources.library.ubc.ca/page.php?details=cps&id=674
Users are unable to access Factiva Journals and left at a Factiva Login Page.
eResources is investigating. In the meantime, please use the Factiva link on the Resource Page which still works – https://resources.library.ubc.ca/page.php?details=factiva&id=543
You can search for the journal you wish to access there.
Photo courtesy: geralt via Pixabay
The Banff International Research Station for Mathematical Innovation and Discovery (BIRS) holds mathematical workshops at several locations worldwide, and creates video recordings of presentations held during these workshops.
BIRS has been a long-standing project partner with cIRcle, collaborating over a decade ago to build an automated deposit feed of these video recordings from the Banff location. This innovative initiative received wide informal and formal recognition, and over time, expanded to capture recordings from the Oaxaca location. This resulted in deposit of over 9000 items to cIRcle’s BIRS Workshop Lecture Videos collection in UBC Library’s Open Collections, leading to millions of user views, and hundreds of thousands of user downloads.
The automated deposit feed was paused in summer 2021 due to limited resourcing, and cIRcle is pleased to share that in collaboration with BIRS and UBC IT, it re-launched in November 2025 with numerous enhancements. The re-launch aligns the workflow with current repository requirements and best practices, including provision of openly available videos of higher quality, and expanded descriptive metadata.
Moving forward, content is received weekly from the Banff site, anticipated to average approximately 1000 presentations across 50 workshops annually. A previously present 6-month deposit delay has been removed, so presentations are made available in cIRcle within weeks (or even days!) of workshop conclusion, providing more immediate access to all. Via cIRcle, this content is indexed widely by various discovery layers and search engines (including Google), extending the reach, discovery, and use of these recordings.
The workflow monitoring has also been enhanced, ensuring smooth operations with responsive interventions as-needed, and that all content is received fulsomely and accurately. The workflow steps have also been streamlined to integrate further with cIRcle’s digital preservation activities, ensuring a sustainable workflow for long-term stewardship.
While only the Banff location is initially included in the re-launched workflow, cIRcle and BIRS will continue to collaborate and identify future opportunities to add additional locations (such as the UBC Okanagan location) to the automated deposit feed.
Should capacity and priorities permit, cIRcle may also explore further descriptive metadata enhancements.
While a large majority of cIRcle’s content is text-based content, cIRcle accepts many non-textual teaching and research outputs, such as lecture and workshop recordings. Explore a sample of alternative research outputs in cIRcle.
If you have any questions about this project or other potential deposits, please contact the cIRcle Office.
Some users are seeing are ‘’Access not authorized’ error when trying to access Pitchbook and/or re-create their account to access. We are working with Pitchbook to resolve ASAP
Image courtesy of UBC Library Communications and Marketing
The cIRcle Office is happy to announce updates to the cIRcle File Naming Conventions! Consistent and thoughtfully-considered file naming standards facilitate the discovery and long-term preservation of cIRcle items, so the changes made to cIRcle’s File Naming Conventions aim to align with broader best practices. This ensures that that cIRcle is well-equipped to preserve and provide access to the works of UBC and its community. In addition, the sharing and promotion of these revised conventions can help cIRcle submitters understand why the file names of their content may be changed during cIRcle processing.
For graduate students preparing to submit their theses or dissertations to cIRcle, we recommend you review the Submitting Theses and Dissertations to cIRcle or Submitting Creative Arts Theses and Dissertations to cIRcle (MFA or MMus students only), which have also been updated to align with the broader Conventions.
Simply put, file naming conventions are standards used to name files consistently. They are commonly discussed in the context of research data management, but their use extends far beyond that—file naming conventions exist as a part of countless organizations and facilitate services all around us. While choosing file names might seem like a relatively small consideration in the context of a larger organizational workflow, file names can have significant impacts on a much wider scale. For example, if file names aren’t descriptive enough, it becomes difficult to identify and understand the files. However, when file names become overly long, they become far more prone to corruption, with the possibility for the permanent destruction of files.
In this way, creating a file naming convention is something of a balancing act, and one that requires a lot of research! By documenting the cIRcle File Naming Conventions, we aim to remove the burden of file naming research from our submitters, while ensuring transparency in the necessary work to ensure that their files conform to a standard that can be consistently applied.
Upholding good file naming conventions is vital to ensuring access, preservation, and ongoing maintenance of materials held in cIRcle. File names should be both human- and machine-readable, meaning that the people and computer software interacting with cIRcle files are able to recognize, understand, and process the file names. Additionally, using file names that meet the standards of best practice ensures that content can be found, used, and maintained for as long as possible.
Updating cIRcle’s file naming conventions for repository submissions began as one of cIRcle’s 2024-2025 Unit Plan goals. cIRcle’s 2024-25 cIRcle Digital Repository Research Assistant, Fraser Sutherland, wrote a comprehensive report reviewing cIRcle’s existing file naming conventions and current best practices more broadly, resulting in numerous recommendations.
After the recommendations were reviewed and prioritized by the cIRcle Office, the implementation phase of the project began in Winter 2025-26 via an iterative drafting process by the current Digital Repository Research Assistant, under the guidance of the cIRcle Digital Repository Librarian and cIRcle Library Specialist. The changes went live in late January 2026.
Our updates include the additions to permitted characters, more detailed and comprehensive instructions, updated examples, new guidelines around multi-file deposits, and more. These updates also extend beyond changes to practices—we also chose to expand the rationale behind our Conventions, to provide users with a deeper understanding of what file naming conventions are, and the impacts to the discovery and preservation of their work.
We hope the information we have provided can help readers understand the deeper principles behind why these choices in our Conventions were made, fostering a more complex and nuanced understanding of file names that they can take into future research, employment, or general digital asset management settings.
Interested in learning more about file naming best practices? Check out UBC Library Research Data Management: Why is file naming important?, or consider attending an upcoming Data Bites Workshop on file naming best practices!
Are you a UBC faculty member, student, staff, or community partner interested in submitting your work to cIRcle? If so, consult our Submissions page for more information or contact us!
Off-Campus Users are currently unable to access Kanopy and see a blank screen with a ‘Closing the window…”
This is an Authentication Issue and being investigated by OpenAthens – https://resource.status.openathens.net/
Access to Kanopy appears to be still be working for on campus users.
Image courtesy of Paul Joseph / UBC Brand & Marketing / UBC Studios
My name is Leila Malkin, and I work as the Scholarly Communications Assistant in UBC Library’s Scholarly Communications and Copyright Office. My work connects with several teams across the Library, including cIRcle. Moving between different open scholarship workflows has shown me how many people and processes contribute to making UBC-created materials available to a wider community. The tasks are varied, but they all contribute to the broader goal of supporting open scholarship at the university.
One thing I have learned is that working in the open involves more steps than many people expect. The idea of sharing work freely suggests a simple process, but there are varying permissions, policies, and technical requirements that need to be taken into account when deciding how to make the material available.
A significant portion of our work involves helping UBC faculty instructors and researchers understand these numerous pieces, so they can share their materials openly with confidence. For faculty getting started with open education, Open UBC provides examples, guides, and contacts to help with open teaching and OER development. For questions about open access and sharing research outputs, the Scholarly Communications Open Access page and the cIRcle FAQs offer guidance on author rights, permissions, and the cIRcle deposit process.
For previously published work (such as journal articles), the support often begins with determining the permitted version and where it can be shared. This usually involves reviewing ownership and publisher policies. These policies outline what rights authors retain, which version of their article they can reuse, and where that version can legally be posted. We use resources like the UBC Library Author’s Guide to Self-Archiving, Publication Versions and Permissions to walk faculty through these conditions and help them identify the version that can be deposited into cIRcle.
I encounter this process regularly while doing cIRcle outreach and recruitment for initiatives such as Paper Pledge for the Planet. The outreach process involves reviewing articles that are behind a paywall, confirming through the journal’s policy whether a sharable version exists, and then reaching out to authors with the details. This work supports what is known as green open access.
Green open access involves depositing a version of a published work in a non-commercial repository so it can be read and used without a subscription. In many cases, authors are able to share an accepted or post-print version of their article even if the final published version remains behind a paywall. Figuring out the sharing options for a specific article ahead of time allows us to offer clear guidance and keep the cIRcle deposit process as straightforward as possible for the UBC faculty member. For more information on this process, see cIRcle’s previous post on Publishing grant-funded research articles in cIRcle : The Green Open Access Route.
Work with open educational resources (OER) follows a different process because instructors often connect for support while materials are still being created or adapted. OER are teaching and learning materials that are free to use, adapt, and share. Rather than navigating publisher policies for already published work, OER development focuses on building teaching and learning materials that can be openly shared from the outset.
At UBC, support for OER development is coordinated through Open UBC, which brings together expertise from the Library and the Centre for Teaching, Learning and Technology (CTLT). The Open UBC site provides a starting point for instructors interested in open education, including examples of existing OER, guidance on licensing and attribution, and information about project planning and funding.
My role within this broader effort primarily focuses on supporting open textbooks and other teaching materials developed in Pressbooks. In practice, this means working with instructors as they shape their content into a polished, shareable resource. I help review materials they plan to reuse, such as images or diagrams, to confirm they can be shared openly, and support instructors in applying appropriate attribution. I also assist with structuring and formatting content in Pressbooks to improve clarity, accessibility, and long-term reuse. UBC instructors bring the subject expertise; I help with the practical setup that turns that expertise into a resource that is clear, accessible, and ready to share widely and openly.
If you’re interested in incorporating OER into your teaching, it can be helpful to connect early in the process. Get in touch through Open UBC for a consultation, whether you’re exploring existing OER to replace a paid textbook or developing your own materials. You can also browse the UBC OER Collection to explore existing OER for potential adoption and/or use.
Across both research and teaching projects, openness is highly reliant on collaboration. No single team handles every step. Different library units (along with partners such as the CTLT), contribute technical support, design expertise, rights guidance, preservation knowledge, and platform management.
Within this network of support, cIRcle plays an important role as UBC’s institutional repository. The cIRcle team helps connect UBC research and teaching materials to the broader open access ecosystem by ensuring they are shared openly, clearly described, and easy to find through repositories and discovery tools. This work helps preserve and promote UBC’s scholarly output so it can be used both within and beyond the university.
My role is one part of this larger network. I help connect people with the information and tools they need, and I make sure that the practical details of sharing are handled with care. When these pieces come together, the result is material that is easy to find, understand, and reuse.
If you’re ready to share your journal article or OER in cIRcle, check out the cIRcle Submissions page, or contact the cIRcle Office.
Photo by UX Indonesia on Unsplash
Are you interested in making your research openly accessible online, but aren’t sure where to start? cIRcle is here to help! Read on to find out more about cIRcle and how UBC’s institutional repository can help you share your research with the world.
cIRcle is UBC’s institutional repository, where the published and unpublished research outputs from the UBC community are brought together and are preserved for future generations. Institutions like UBC have repositories similar to cIRcle to enhance the global reach of UBC’s research by making digital research materials openly accessible, ensuring they can be seen, explored, and engaged with by anyone, anywhere. Find out more about cIRcle’s mission and service offerings on our About cIRcle page.
For UBC’s faculty, staff, and students, cIRcle offers a pathway to making a range of research materials, including unpublished works, widely available and permanently citable. cIRcle’s long-term preservation efforts mean that research outputs will remain accessible into the future and can be reliably referenced using a DOI.
cIRcle accepts a wide variety of research and teaching materials, including study protocols, podcasts, infographics, and more. Read through our Content Guidelines to find out if your project or research output is the right fit for cIRcle, and give our File Format Guidelines a browse to make sure the files you are creating align with our recommendations for digital preservation and accessibility. Don’t see your output listed? Contact the cIRcle Office to discuss your specific project.
Curious to see how different content types are presented and engaged with in cIRcle? Our Alternative Research Outputs in cIRcle blog post highlights some unique research types and how to find them in Open Collections, cIRcle’s discovery interface.
cIRcle serves the UBC community and its partners, and anyone from the UBC community can submit their work to cIRcle for review. Different types of material may be handled differently, based on authorship and academic requirements, if relevant.
Faculty and staff can submit articles, open education resources, research project materials, and much more to cIRcle directly from our Faculty & Staff Work page. Anyone interested in depositing grant-funded publications to cIRcle should familiarize themselves with copyright, publisher permissions, and green open access publishing options.
Graduate students publishing their UBC thesis or dissertation must follow the submission requirements as set out by Graduate and Postdoctoral Studies (UBC Vancouver) and the College of Graduate Studies (UBC Okanagan). Students interested in learning more about making their thesis or dissertation openly accessible under a Creative Commons license can read our UBC Theses and Dissertations: Open Access and Embargo Considerations guide.
Current UBC students who want to share their course outputs and research projects with the wider research community can submit graduate-level non-thesis work and undergraduate-level coursework to cIRcle. Student submissions to cIRcle can be done as part of a class-wide submission, coordinated by your instructor, or can be done as a single, student-initiated submission. All student submissions require approval from your faculty supervisor or instructor. Graduate students can follow the instructions on our Graduate Work (Non-thesis) page to deposit their work directly to cIRcle, and undergraduate students can follow the 5-step submission instructions on our Undergraduate Work page to submit their work to cIRcle.
Are you interested in knowing more about cIRcle, our behind-the-scenes projects, and how we manage, maintain, and share new content? Our 2024-2025 Impact & Activity Report shares what’s been keeping us busy this past year, and the cIRcle FAQ offers a deep-dive into some of our most frequent questions, and might answer the question you’re asking.
Keep an eye on our cIRcle Blog for regular updates about what we’re working on, new content in cIRcle, and more!