PubMed Central Canada (PMC Canada) represents a partnership between the Canadian Institutes of Health Research (CIHR), the National Research Council's Canada Institute for Scientific and Technical Information (NRC-CISTI), and the National Library of Medicine of the US. The present study was done to gauge faculty awareness about the CIHR Policy on Access to Research and about their familiarity with PubMed Central Canada, the federal open access repository. Researchers were asked to rank search and browse features that would be helpful while using PMC Canada. The study recommends academic librarians to play an active role in promoting open access repositories and informing faculty members about policies on access to research as stipulated by grant funding agencies. (Contains 1 table and 4 figures.)