Elevating Open Access and Useability: Scholarship@Western's Transition to Scholaris
Published on March 24, 2025
Western Libraries has joined the new national shared repository service, Scholaris. This means that the institutional repository, Scholarship@Western will be migrating to a new platform. It will move from its current bepress/Digital Commons platform to a Scholaris-hosted DSpace instance, supported by Scholars Portal by June 30, 2025.
The repository will be re-branded as Western Scholaris and users will notice some changes as part of the migration process. For example, there will be a new streamlined interface with a refined collections hierarchy.
With this move, the repository’s scope will be more tightly focused on making open access content publicly available. This means that some metadata-only content will not be migrated. Other content, such as image archives or digital scholarship projects, will be moved to platforms other than DSpace. To facilitate these various moves, that content will remain on the current Scholarship@Western platform for the next year or so, likely until early 2026.
If you are an administrator of a collection in the current Scholarship@Western platform, please continue that work as-is. As we learn more and get closer to the migration date, one of the migration team members will be in touch with more specific information about how your project will be affected.
We will be sharing additional project milestones and updates as we move closer to our go live date. We appreciate your support and patience during this transition.
Please direct any questions, comments, or concerns about the repository migration to the Research & Scholarly Communications Team at rsclib@uwo.ca.
