From left: Tara Stephens, cIRcle Librarian; Helen Halbert, Open Scholar winner; and Daniel Wood, VP Academic and External Affairs, UBC GSS.
Climate change mitigation and mobile device engagement are the topics of the latest graduate student submissions to win the GSS cIRcle Open Scholar Award.
The award highlights UBC as a leader in the open dissemination of graduate student work, and creates an incentive for grad students to populate cIRcle with material beyond theses and dissertations. The prize is a collaboration between the Graduate Student Society and cIRcle, UBC’s digital repository that was set up by the Library in 2007.
Polly Ng, who specialized in sustainability planning at UBC’s School of Community and Regional Planning, was recognized for her entry Making the case for using development cost charges for climate change mitigation.
Meanwhile, Helen Halbert was part of a trio that produced the paper Toward a Model of Mobile User Engagement. Halbert, the sole graduate student involved in the project (the other authors are a Postdoctoral Fellow and an Assistant Professor), has just completed her studies for a Master of Library and Information Studies degree at UBC’s School of Library, Archival and Information Studies.
Authors of winning submissions, which are chosen on a lottery system, receive $500; their work is made publicly available on a long-term basis by UBC Library’s cIRcle.
“I knew early on in my studies that I wanted my research to make a solid contribution to professional practice in my field,” says Ng. “I hope that the GSS cIRcle Open Scholar Award encourages more research that works on practical solutions to practical problems.”
“I think this award is a great way to recognize the diverse work that UBC graduate students do outside of their theses and dissertations,” adds Halbert. “[The award] serves to increase awareness of open access publishing among graduate students and, in doing so, promotes the practice of sharing academic research with all – regardless of whether they are members of the UBC community or not.”
The GSS cIRcle Open Scholar Award is given twice a year. The submission deadline for the next award instalment is September 24, 2014, although submissions can be made at any time – please visit cIRcle for more information.