Érudit : 25 years
of open knowledge!
For over a quarter of a century, Érudit has supported the open digital publishing and research in the arts, humanities, and social sciences.
Érudit was born of a vision for the future: to make research results openly accessible using digital tools and the Internet, technologies that were just emerging in 1998.
In 25 years, Érudit has become a central platform for digital dissemination thanks to the commitment of its consortium, which includes the Université de Montréal, the Université de Laval and the Université du Québec à Montréal, as well as of its many partners. This success has also been the result of the work of the many people who promote the spread of knowledge throughout the world.
Thanks to you and to all of Érudit’s partners, notably the journals and libraries, who have all contributed over the last 25 years to the common good by supporting access to knowledge. Let us together continue to feed our collective curiosity and intelligence for many years to come!
250 000
publications
5 million
annual users in 200 countries
10 000
articles disseminated annually in over 35 disciplines
98%
of our content is available in open access
Érudit Through the Years
1998
While the Internet was still in its infancy and fax machines were in their glory days, we launched the first version of the erudit.org platform, a year after the creation of the Direction des publications électroniques by the Presses de l’Université de Montréal.
1999
Digitization of the first retrospective collections with the archiving of two journals, Meta and Sociologie et sociétés.
2000
As a response to requests from the Canadian academic community for a structure that could provide digital publishing services, an interuniversity group dedicated to digital publishing was put in place to manage Érudit.
2001
Launch of the second version of the erudit.org platform.
2004
Érudit becomes the Érudit Consortium, a general partnership which includes the Université de Montréal, the Université Laval and the Université du Québec à Montréal.
2010
Launch of the 3rd version of the platform with new features and the objective of digitalizing more than 60,000 articles from the cultural journals of the Société de développement des périodiques culturels québécois (SODEP).
2014
Érudit is recognized as a Major Science Initiative by the Canada Foundation for Innovation.
2015
Creation of the Partnership for Open Access with the Canadian Research Knowledge Network.
2017
Launch of the 4th version of the Érudit platform, with over 150,000 articles available.
2018
Érudit and the Public Knowledge Project collaborate to create Coalition Publica, a partnership with the objective of building a national, open and non-profit infrastructure dedicated to research, dissemination and digital scholarly publishing.
2019
Development of large textual and bibliometric datasets for digital humanities research.
2020
Funding for Coalition Publica’s operations by the Pan-Canadian Knowledge Access Initiative program created by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council.
2021
By signing the Helsinki Initiative on Multilingualism in Scholarly Communication, Érudit confirms its commitment to bibliodiversity and to bilingual and multilingual Québec- and Canada-based scholarly journals.
2023
Our Main Objectives
01
Promoting Québec and Canadian Research Around the World
75% of article views on the erudit.org platform come from outside Canada. Users are based in over 85 countries, notably France, the United States, Germany, Morocco, Belgium, Cameroon and Ivory Coast.
02
Support and Develop Bibliodiversity in the Social Sciences and the Humanities
The journals disseminated on erudit.org are representative of the richness of the research being done in the social sciences, the humanities, the arts and literature. Anthropology, literary studies, psychology, demography, education… All in all, more than 35 disciplines are represented in the available corpus. These journals are editorially independent and rooted in their research communities.
03
Promote Access to Research Results for a Larger Audience
Érudit has established over 1,200 agreements with libraries and documentary institutions worldwide to ensure wide distribution of its corpus.
04
Support Scholarly Publications Through a Viable Economic Model
Journals disseminated by Érudit are either immediately in open access or behind a moving wall. Subscription revenues go to restricted journals, while open access journals receive financial support from the Partnership for Open Access. This hybrid model ensures both economic support for the journals and general access to most of the research material.
05
Contribute to a Knowledge-Based Society
In a context where disinformation is becoming more prevalent, guaranteeing open and easy access to thorough and serious scientific and cultural resources has become essential. With its policy of open access and its strategy for content discoverability, Érudit is proud to contribute to the democratization of knowledge.
Our Partners
The Érudit Consortium wants to thank all of its institutional partners, both public and private, that have supported it for close to 25 years and which contribute to its success.
A network of organizations also supports the activities undertaken by Coalition Publica, our partnership with the Public Knowledge Project.
Associated Universities
Funding Organizations
Our Partners
Testimonials
“The creation of Érudit two and a half decades ago was visionary. An early adopter, advocate for, and driver of the open circulation of knowledge, the organization’s mission to provide sustainable infrastructure for open-access humanities and social sciences scholarship has made it an essential element of the Canadian research landscape. We look forward to working with Érudit over the next quarter of a century, for the benefit of Canadian-based research and research infrastructure.”
Samantha MacFarlane, Co-Editor in Chief of KULA
“Érudit has provided the Diamond OA journal that I edit with visibility, a professional profile, archiving, and better dissemination. It has also raised issues with me that I hadn’t thought of, concerning the above topics.”
Dominik Wujastyk, Editor and founder of History of Science in South Asia
“Érudit’s dedication to open access publishing is commendable in an era of steep library pricing and pay-per-essay publishing that limits rather than expands our access to knowledge.”
Kristopher Woofter, Editor-in-Chief of Monstrum
“Érudit is a Canada-based platform for distributing mainly non-scientific journals, and we are happy to be one af the few science journals in the group. Thank you for providing us with access to subscribers and potential readers far beyond what we would reach in the traditional geoscience publishing world.”
Sandra Barr, editor of Atlantic Geoscience
“As a rare example of a non-commercial, scholar-led publishing platform, Érudit, and its innovative Coalition Publica partnership with the Public Knowledge Project, is building a more equitable, sustainable, and open future for Canadian scholarly journal publishing.”
Dale Askey & Sonya Betz, University of Alberta Library
“Erudit has become an invaluable partner for the dissemination of scholarship published by Canadian SSH journals. By drawing on the expertise of those working at Erudit, our journals have realized growth in their readership as well as general benefits to their respective publishing programs. This level of expertise and growth is difficult for many smaller, independent, Canadian journals to develop on their own. Erudit has proven to be an essential publishing partner for many Canadian journals.”
Kathy Killoh , Journal Coordinator of Labour / Le Travail
“As editor of Encounters in Theory and History of Education, I would like to congratulate Érudit on its 25th Anniversary and express our gratitude for its excellent work. The personnel has always been ready to respond to questions and to help us do a better work. We appreciate the dissemination of our work in French.”
Rosa Bruno Jofré & Calvin Bowry, editors of Encounters in Theory and History of Education
“The commitment shown by the Fonds de recherche du Québec in its support for the role of French in scholarly publications takes concrete shape in its long-standing partnership with Érudit. This collaboration contributed to the dissemination of research in the social sciences, the humanities, the arts and literature as well as the results of this research to the population in Québec. It also gives Québec more reach within the Francophonie.”
Rémi Quirion, Chief Scientist of Québec
“In an international context of open science, where collaborative production of knowledge with nonacademic social actors, bibliodiversity, multilingualism, collaborative and non-commercial publishing models, as well as the reworking of academic evaluation are promoted, the work done by initiatives such as Érudit has been essential, and we extend our warmest congratulations on its 25th anniversary.”
Karina Batthyány, Executive Director of CLACSO
“Partnering with Érudit was one of the best strategic decisions that we made for the journals published by Iter Press. We deeply appreciate their leadership and sage advice in the pragmatics of journal publication and grant applications, especially as we work toward full open access. Congratulations on your 25th anniversary! We look forward to many more years of working together.”
Bill Bowen & Marian Cosic, Iter Press
