The Digital Research Alliance of Canada (the Alliance) has awarded $164 thousand in funding to McMaster University for a new partnership on the Expansion of Lunaris. This initiative forms part of the Alliance’s DRI Investments for 2023-25, and will benefit researchers by enhancing research data discovery.
The aim of this initiative is to improve data discoverability in Lunaris, the Alliance’s bilingual research data discovery service, by expanding the support and development team.
Through this initiative, McMaster University will host two positions, providing additional capacity to facilitate service improvements that will meet researcher needs and improve the discoverability of research data.
Service improvements to Lunaris will include:
- Enhanced user experience (UX)
- Alignment with Indigenous data sovereignty principles
- Expansion of metadata harvesting capabilities to allow for an enhanced search experience
- Improved discovery capabilities for specialized disciplinary data collections
- Increase in Canadian repositories available for federated national discovery
- Development of a community of practice centred on engagement, collaboration and promotion
Lunaris indexes over 85,000 datasets from repositories and collections across Canada, including post-secondary institutions, government, research organizations and national repositories. Lunaris facilitates data discovery and reuse, which enables researchers to validate research findings, inform new research, increase research visibility, foster collaboration and accelerate discovery.
Investments in Lunaris will ensure that researchers receive high-quality national data discovery services, add value to publicly funded research and help Canada become a leader in the expanding global community of open research.
The Alliance looks forward to working with McMaster University to advance this important work.
For more information about this initiative, please contact: funding-subventions@alliancecan.ca.