Launch of the Canadian Institute for Open Knowledge (CIOK)

The Canadian Institute for Open Knowledge (CIOK) was created in 2025 in Winnipeg by a collective of educators, researchers, artists, and clinicians who shared a common concern: many academic voices—especially emerging, multilingual, interdisciplinary, or unaffiliated—remain underrepresented in traditional scholarly publishing.

Rooted in Canada but globally oriented, CIOK is committed to supporting:

• early-career researchers;

• scholars working outside formal institutions;

• researchers from underfunded universities and the Global South;

• bold research at the crossroads of disciplines, languages, and knowledge traditions.

The Institute’s flagship initiative is Apertum: Journal of Boundary-Crossing Research, a bilingual, peer-reviewed, open-access journal. The first call for papers will be launched in Summer 2025, with publication of the inaugural issue to follow. Apertum will feature scholarship in education, humanities, philosophy, social sciences, health, and comparative literatures—especially research addressing ethics, critical pedagogy, and open innovation.

CIOK’s founding activities include:

• a research cluster on Canadian curricular history and memory politics;

• a neuroeducation project on executive functions in bilingual learners;

• a comparative study of African francophone and Canadian minority literatures;

• a pilot on teaching resilience during times of crisis.

CIOK welcomes collaboration from researchers, students, libraries, and institutions who believe in equity, multilingualism, and open access as foundations of a more inclusive scientific culture.