Getting to know our colleagues: Q&A with CRDCN
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The Canada Foundation for Innovation (CFI), through its Major Science Initiatives Fund (MSIF), provides support for the ongoing operating and maintenance needs of research facilities of national importance. Among the leading-edge infrastructures funded by the CFI, only two are in the humanities and social sciences: the Canadian Research Data Centres Network (CRDCN) and Coalition Publica.
Both support the work of researchers across Canada. While Coalition Publica promotes open access to research, the CRDCN aims to make research data widely accessible. Given the complementary nature of our missions, we wanted to learn more about the activities of the CRDCN for the benefit of our community. We invite you to read the interview granted to us by their team.
What is research data?
The research data made accessible by the Canadian Research Data Centre Network (CRDCN) through 42 collaborating institutions of research and higher education are wide ranging files of microdata collected and managed by government organisations, such as Statistics Canada. Researchers analyse the data, derive insights from them, and publish or present their findings to academic, social service or policy experts.
How did the network come into being?
The Network was founded in 2000 and the first Research Data Centres (RDCs) were established across Canada to provide secure access to Statistics Canada microdata and other data. McMaster University has been the host institution to the CRDCN head office since 2010, while the University of Montreal hosts the Quebec office called the Quebec Inter-University Centre for Social Statistics (QICSS), and 33 universities (including the QICSS network) host RDCs on campus for access to 42 collaborating institutions of research and higher education.
How does CRDCN make life easier for researchers?
The ability to access important microdata through a collaborating institution, rather than having to travel to Ottawa, allows researchers to maximise time spent on the research project working with the data and analysing them for further insights. The CRDCN and Statistics Canada are jointly building a virtual Research Data Centre (vRDC) that will be rolled out across the country over the course of two years. This state-of-the-art secure infrastructure will permit qualifying collaborating institutions and researchers to access the data from private remote locations, such as homes or offices. In addition to providing access to the data, the CRDCN also provides training, educational resources, promotion, and opportunities for researchers and organisations to further the knowledge mobilisation efforts for both data and research across disciplines and policy areas.
What technical challenges does the network face?
Of course, when dealing with so much computing power, there has been a push to update the infrastructure and democratise access, which the IT team at CRDCN and Statistics Canada are addressing through the build of the vRDC through generous funding from the Canadian Foundation for Innovation (CFI), the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC) and the Canadian Institutes of Health Research (CIHR). In addition, Canada is positioning itself to not only be a part of the international arena on FAIR practices, but to begin leading some key areas, by updating infrastructure so that high-performance computing can keep pace with the amounts of data that are increasingly gathered.
What are your next developments?
In addition to the massive undertaking of building the nation-wide data access platform vRDC, mentioned above, we are currently finalising our next five-year strategic plan to share with researchers and partners in 2024, which will demonstrate just how we plan to leverage the newly connected virtual network to assist researchers in addressing issues that impact and benefit Canadians. We look forward to sharing the new plan and new virtual platform in the months and years to come.
About CRDCN
The Canadian Research Data Centre Network (CRDCN) is a premier research and training Network for over 2,000 researchers in the quantitative social and health sciences in Canada. The Network provides unique access to Statistics Canada and other federal data on 33 campuses across the country that advance knowledge and inform public policy. The CRDCN is funded by SSHRC, CIHR, CFI, the FRQ, Statistics Canada and 42 partner universities. CRDCN is recognized as one of Canada’s Major Science Initiatives by the Canadian Foundation for Innovation (CFI).
About Coalition Publica
Coalition Publica is a partnership between Érudit and the Public Knowledge Project to advance research dissemination and digital scholarly publishing in Canada. Together, we are supporting the social sciences and humanities journal community in the transition towards sustainable open access. We are developing a non-commercial, open source national infrastructure for digital scholarly publishing, dissemination, and research—combining Open Journal Systems and the erudit.org platform—as well as research investigating the Canadian scholarly publishing ecosystem.