Canada's three federal research funding agencies released their revised open access policy in October. It applies to grants and Chair awards made from January 1, 2027. The award date matters. The new policy doesn't automatically replace the rules governing every existing research project.
For covered research articles, authors must retain sufficient rights, use an open licence and arrange immediate access through a Canadian institutional repository or a trusted Canadian platform. Making an article free on a publisher's website doesn't necessarily satisfy that requirement. The policy covers articles reviewed by peers, including research supported partly by agency funding. It doesn't extend the same obligation to books, book chapters or podcasts.
For humanities researchers and scholarly publishers, this puts the publication agreement earlier in the planning process. Authors must tell publishers about their obligations when submitting work. The agencies' guidance permits an accepted manuscript to serve as the accessible version, so an expensive publishing option isn't the only possible route. A journal's branding or use of publishing software alone doesn't establish that it meets the Canadian platform requirement.
Members working with journals, research partnerships or cultural scholarship may need help checking which grant rules apply, which manuscript version can be shared and what their agreement permits. A useful review connects those three questions before publication. It should also preserve confidentiality, consent and other legitimate limits on what research is published. Open access to a published article isn't permission to disclose sensitive underlying material.
Revised policy, implementation guidance and release announcement.