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.
Borealis is available to researchers who are affiliated with a participating Canadian institution or research organization and their collaborators. Researchers receive support from local academic libraries and research organizations to facilitate the deposit, publishing, sharing, preservation, and discovery of research data.
Borealis supports open discovery, management, sharing, and preservation of Canadian research data. The Borealis repository supports the FAIR principles for scientific data management and stewardship by ensuring data are findable, accessible, interoperable, and reusable. Value-added features to enhance data discovery, access, and use, along with preservation of research data, are outlined below:
- Bilingual platform in English and French
- Automatic generation of data citation with DOI
- Descriptive metadata following disciplinary standards to assist in discovery and reuse
- Easy to use Creative Commons licence templates or customizable terms of use
- Support for restricted file access and file embargoes
- Metrics application to track collection and dataset downloads and other metrics
- Customizable collection landing pages, with faceted browse and advanced search
- Dataset and file-level version tracking
- Data exploration tools such as the Data Explorer and file previewers
- File format normalization for tabular files (e.g., SPSS, Excel) as preservation-friendly action
- Preservation support through monthly integrity checks in combination with secure, cloud storage built with partner universities (Ontario Library Research Cloud)
- APIs for external tool interoperability and integration
- Flexible permissions to assist with collaboration and sharing
