A national university research network has received a $25-million federal grant to help provide social science and humanities scholars with access to specialized databases.

The Canadian Research Knowledge Network provides computer access to electronic versions of scholarly journals and research databases for 72 universities across the country.

On Thursday, the CRKN announced it will use the federal grant to help create two new databases for social science and humanities research, which would include areas such as aboriginal studies, communications, multiculturalism, economics and education.

The University of Ottawa will host the infrastructure for the new databases.

"[Researchers] will have access to authoritative material, to accurate information, to scholarly information, and it will all be available at the touch of a mouse," said Deborah deBruijn, CRKN executive director.

Much material in learned journals around the world can't be accessed by search engines because it's copyrighted. The CRKN buys licensing rights for the material to make it available to more than 800,000 researchers and graduate students in Canada.

The information is available only to people registered at the participating universities.

"This is going to be huge," said Adele Reinhartz, a religious studies professor at the University of Ottawa.

"What it's going to do is allow me to sit at my desk, read through stuff, access the journals and the references right there on the spot, and be able to conduct my research much more efficiently and in a much more proactive way," she said.

"The ease of it, bringing the students into the larger conversation with scholars all over the world, whose works will be accessible through this, is really fantastic."