The Federal Open Science Repository of Canada: Building public trust through open access

The Federal Open Science Repository of Canada (FOSRC) addresses a key infrastructure gap and responds to the 2020 Roadmap for Open Science, which outlines recommendations to guide Canadian federal open science initiatives. These aim to promote transparency and accountability by making federal scientific articles and publications more findable and accessible to Canadians and the global research community. The FOSRC is a collaborative initiative between the Office of the Chief Science Advisor, Shared Services Canada, the Federal Science Libraries Network/National Research Council Canada, and eight science-based departments and agencies. It launched publicly in January 2024 and now serves as a centralized access point for federal scientific outputs, streamlining discovery and re-use of government-funded research. This poster outlines the FOSRC’s development, milestones, collaboration model, and technical infrastructure. It also highlights its impacts, future directions, and lessons learned from challenges faced—offering insights for similar initiatives. Since the release of the Roadmap, the world has experienced a global pandemic and a measurable decline in public trust in governments, including in Canada. “Public trust” is a complex sentiment, shaped by misinformation and disinformation, science literacy, and perceptions of government integrity. Within the broader open science movement, the FOSRC contributes to the restoration and sustainability of public trust by supporting knowledge dissemination, operational transparency and public access to information.