Powering discovery and innovation, together.
The Alliance’s first five-year mandate is a snapshot of the impact we can achieve through shared vision, strategic investment and collaboration. Together, we are strengthening Canada’s digital research infrastructure (DRI), uniting experts and equipping researchers with the tools and technologies needed to drive discovery with global impact.
AI-enabled research in action
Meet the Alliance Researcher Council members harnessing AI to break barriers, accelerate discovery and shape solutions to Canada’s biggest challenges.
Digital research infrastructure by the numbers
(as of March 31, 2025)
Explore our 2024-25 Annual Report to learn more about our impact.
AI-Enabled Compute
We are providing Canadian researchers with access to AI-dedicated compute infrastructure, tools and resources.
Read more about our national AI leadership.
Advanced Research Computing
Advanced research computing (ARC) is a critical component of Canada’s digital research infrastructure (DRI). Researchers from all disciplines use ARC to accelerate discovery and achieve greater academic and global impact.
Computational and data-intensive research, including high-performance computing and storage, relies on high-speed networks, software, standards and data-management services. We work with five regional organizations (Compute Ontario, Calcul Québec, ACENET, the BC DRI Group and Prairies DRI Group) as well as over 200 experts in 38 partner universities and research institutions across Canada to support ARC infrastructure and the researchers who rely on it.
Federated Research Data Repository
The Federated Research Data Repository (FRDR) is a national, bilingual platform for sharing and preserving Canadian research data. The FRDR service provides Canadian researchers in any discipline with a robust repository option into which large research datasets can be ingested, curated, processed for preservation, discovered, cited and shared.
Borealis
Borealis, the Canadian Dataverse Repository, is a bilingual, multi-disciplinary, secure, Canadian research data repository, supported by academic libraries and research institutions across Canada. Borealis is a shared service provided in partnership with Canadian regional academic library consortia, institutions, research organizations, and the Digital Research Alliance of Canada, with technical infrastructure hosted by Scholars Portal and the University of Toronto Libraries.
Lunaris
Lunaris is Canada’s national discovery service for multidisciplinary data from research institutions across the country. Datasets from over 150 academic, government, and research repositories are made discoverable in a bilingual interface that provides keyword and map-based searching.
DMP Assistant
The DMP Assistant is a national, online, bilingual data management planning tool developed by the Digital Research Alliance of Canada (the Alliance) in collaboration with host institution University of Alberta to assist researchers in preparing data management plans (DMPs). This tool is freely available to all researchers and develops a DMP through a series of key data management questions, supported by best-practice guidance and examples.
DataCite Canada Consortium
DataCite is a global non-profit organization dedicated to making data and scholarly content more accessible and citable. DataCite’s core activity is providing digital object identifier (DOI) and associated metadata registration. DOIs are persistent identifiers (PIDs) for digital objects which are widely used for identifying published content, datasets, and other scholarly research outputs. There are over 700,000 DOIs registered in Canada with DataCite.
The DataCite Canada Consortium, co-managed by CRKN and the Digital Research Alliance of Canada (the Alliance), is a collective of organizations and institutions registering DOIs in Canada through DataCite. CRKN provides administration, licensing, and financial services, including all invoicing to DataCite Canada Consortium members. The Alliance provides best practices guidance and technical support. CRKN and the Alliance work together to engage the community (e.g., via community calls).
