Open Access in the Great White North

The University of Ottawa has become the first Canadian university to establish an open access repository for research conducted by its faculty (H/T Science Canada).  This appears to be a more unified open access effort that what I’ve run across with other institutions, only in the sense that you usually hear only about the repository.  In addition, the University of Ottawa has also set up an author fund to cover open access author fees, an annual budget for digitizing course materials, and support for the university’s open access journals.  Researchers at the university are not required to submit their work to the repository.  The odd thing about the whole open access trend in Canada is that most funders have mandated it for their grantees, but the universities have not done the same.  Go figure.