I am happy to report that CRL has certified Scholars Portal as a trustworthy digital repository for electronic journals.  Between January and July 2012 CRL conducted an audit of Scholars Portal on behalf of the Ontario Council of University Libraries (OCUL), an organization representing 21 Canadian universities.  OCUL, which has been acquiring and managing digital content since 2002, is committed to the long-term preservation of scholarly resources for the benefit of future students and researchers.  

The CRL audit measured the compliance of Scholars Portal with internationally established criteria for trusted digital repositories, including the Trustworthy Repositories Audit & Certification: Criteria and Checklist1 (TRAC).   The detailed audit report is now available on the CRL website.

Our audit was guided by a certification advisory panel, whose members represent the major stakeholder populations of CRL and OCUL.  The members of the CRL Certification Advisory Panel for this audit were:

Scholars Portal is of great interest to CRL because of the central role it plays in hosting and archiving e-journal collections subscribed to by Ontario universities, many of them CRL members.  The repository is a critical part of the infrastructure that protects the significant investment of these libraries in research materials. 

To date CRL has also audited and certified Portico, Chronopolis and HathiTrust as trustworthy digital repositories.   CRL certification, which entails continued monitoring and risk analysis on the repositories, is designed to support responsible and transparent stewardship of materials critical to research and teaching in the humanities, sciences and social sciences.