S Y N E R G I E S

The Canadian ResearchInformation Network

Canadian Foundation for InnovationExternal Committee Evaluation – 09 15 2003

S Y N E R G I E SAn innovative research

infrastructurefor the Social Sciences and

Humanities Integration of all types of scholarly documents

Research and dissemination  Highly developed interfaces

Network strategy option

Integration of all typesof scholarly documents

Text, audio and graphical information

Synergies will be the first infrastructure worldwide to enable full-text searches

of this wide range of document types.

Dissertations and theses – journal articles – books –pre-prints – e-prints – conference proceedings –research reports – statistical data

Research results will no longer be restricted to a type of document.

Dissemination and access – Synergies gives access topast and present Canadian research data and outputs. It will also assure the long-term preservation of the content (XML). This will greatly benefitand highlight the Canadian social sciences and humanities heritage.

Research infrastructure and Dissemination of information

Research infrastructure – Synergies can organize data depending on its status as either a primary and/or secondary source. The network’s highly developed database and interfaces will offer a first-rate research infrastructure for SSH (Sociology of knowledge, bibliometrics, automatic translation, text analysis, etc.).

Highly developed interfaces

Researchers can program their own search interface according to their needs for primary and/or secondary sources of information

Text and graphical interfacesoffer fast, "at a glance" visual results,

including "topic maps" and "scatter diagrams"

English and

FrenchInterfaces and Documentation

Search criterias include: primary source, secondary source, author, date, geological locations, disciplines, quantitative or qualitative methodologies,language(s), keywords, title, bibliographic references, abstracts, etc.

Journals

ThesesPreprints

Books

Datasets

Sounds

Researcher CDocumentationon a given subject

Researcher BBibliometrics

Researcher DAutomatictranslation

Researcher AText analysis

Synergies Access Concept

Text Analysis Search

Documentation Search

Network Strategy Option

1. Regional network• 5 regional nodes: UNB, UdeM, UofT, UofC, SFU• 11 affiliated institutions – more to come• Researchers – Librarians – Academic publishers –

E-Publishing experts – Administrators2. National network

• Inclusive approach: all Canadian universities are invited to participate (institutional repositories, etc.)

3. International network• Synergies has a global vision and does not limit itself

to Canada. The infrastructure will be interoperable on an international level.• France, Belgium, MIT, Cornell University, etc.

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● Université de Montréal

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● University of Toronto

● University of Calgary

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Simon Fraser University University of New Brunswick

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Organizational Structure

Open Access – The democratization of

scholarly information• Synergies will be freely accessible worldwide for

most of its collection, in agreement with authors and/or publishers.

• Researchers are in need for open access to information on equal terms. This includes students at all educational levels, researchers in remote geographical locations, as well as researchers not affiliated with a university.

• Synergies has the commitment to provide open access for society as a whole and prescribes to the democratization of research as well as a citizenship based on knowledge and information.

In Synergy with the research community,

granting agencies, and publishing institutions

70 letters of support from researchers, journal editors and chair holders 9 letters of support from organizations (national and

international)– Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council – Marc Renaud– Fonds québécois pour la recherche sur la société et la culture – Louise

Dandurand– National Library and Archives of Canada – Roch Carrier and Ian Wilson– Canadian Association of Research Libraries – Wiliam R. Maes– Association for Canadian Studies – Robert Isreal– Canadian Association of Learned Journals – Ronald Huebert– National Research Council – Christian Couturier– Ministère de la Jeunesse, de l’Éducation et de la Recherche (France) –

Claude Jolly – Conseil général des Hautes Écoles (Belgium) – Robert Bernard

Why now?Canada’s university community needs a credible and professional information system that guarantees the long-term preservation, production and dissemination of research data and outputs.

The community is ready and willing to create theSynergies infrastructure with our already established team.

The required technology exists and is affordable.

If the SSH community wishes to, more than just catch up,assume a leading role in research communication on an

international level, it needs the Synergies infrastructure now!