UBC Library often has cause to celebrate the success of student employees who are emerging leaders in their areas of study, as was recently the case with Tracey Vantyghem. A MLIS co-op student in the Scholarly Communications & Copyright Office, Vantyghem was awarded the Open Access Ambassador Travel Scholarship to attend the Berlin 11 Student and Early Stage Researcher Satellite Conference in Berlin, Germany. The conference brought together students and early stage researchers to work with leading figures in the open access movement, including researchers, publishers, policymakers and advocates.
“Many students and researchers are becoming aware of the rising costs of academic serials, and how this means that more and more people can’t afford access to the information they need,” says Vantyghem. “This includes everyone from academics and students at smaller universities that lack a large serials budget, to doctors and health workers at hospitals that are not supported by a research library, to researchers in developing countries whose institutions simply can’t afford the cost of many important journals.”
Open access materials, available online to the public and provided by scholars for free, benefit such groups and provide opportunities for multi-disciplinary research breakthroughs.
Vantyghem notes that UBC Library is well placed to act as a hub for open access advocacy, mentorship and education. “I meet with many researchers who are interested in publishing their work as open access, but feel that they are beholden to a tenure and promotion system that discourages involvement in open access or straying from the status quo and, as a result, that their hands are tied,” she says. “However, young researchers are the ones who will inherit the current scholarly communications system, and so I think that engaging them now and making the Library a hub for open access support and education are the most promising ways to encourage change.”