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!
Many thanks to guest blogger, Barbara Towell, for contributing the below post! Barbara is E-Records Manager with Digital Programs & Services at UBC Library and an avid cyclist.
This blog is part two of Kitty and Clara Wilson – Intrepid Sisters on the Move. If you have not read part one, please find it here. In this part I plan on comparing spots Kitty and Clara saw on their ride with those same or similar spots today.
The Rides in Context
Kitty and Clara were already local Vancouver celebrities when they began their cycling tour up the coast of Vancouver Island to Campbell River. In 1936, eighteen months before the first of their Vancouver Island trips, they achieved what every penny-pinching backpacker dreams of: they talked their way onto the British Steam Ship Harmatris, a merchant tanker headed for Australia, securing unpaid employment (in return for passage) as deckhands. They did jobs such as cleaning and painting. This was the first of many merchant tankers on which they sought, and received, passage to their next destination. Their first port-of-call was Melbourne, then on to Tasmania, Australia; Durban, South Africa; Dublin, Ireland; then finally, London England where they planned a cycling trip around the United Kingdom.
In London, they bought second-hand bikes, probably Rastus and Ginger and tried to teach themselves to ride them. Imagine planning a cross-country cycling trip without knowing how to ride a bike? After a few failed attempts and bloodied body parts they agreed, “we will try to learn to ride these just once more and if we crash this time we will sell the bicycles and walk around England” (Vancouver Sun, Dec. 12, 1936). Finally their bikes stayed upright and they embarked on their first cycling tour around the England and Scotland. In 1938 they returned to Vancouver via Panama. Once back in Vancouver, Clara gave talks to women’s groups and interviews to newspapers about their unique and, economical way of seeing the world. Clara always emphasized the thrift of this around the world adventure.
Their cycling travels continued in BC over the next decade. They rode each summer and documented their trips in the photo albums held at Rare Books and Special Collections. What I discovered on our recreation of their trip is that very little of what Kitty and Clara documented in the album and letters home survives – maybe just the road and the ocean, but joy endured, across time, across cyclists.
Nanaimo
Qualicum
Parksville
Campbell River
Campbell River
Elk Falls
