Library Announces Winners of OpenCon Travel Scholarships

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BY Erica Balch

October 24, 2014

Two McMaster students are about to get a crash course in Open Access, a global movement that aims to make online scholarly publications accessible to researchers without charges or other barriers to access.

McMaster University Library has awarded travel scholarships valued at $1500 US each to Zack Batist, a PhD candidate in Anthroplogy and Lorraine Chuen, a Masters student in Psychology, Neuroscience & Behaviour.

Zack Batist, and Lorraine Chuen, each received a $1500 travel scholarship from the McMaster Library to attend an Open Access conference in Washington DC.
Zack Batist, and Lorraine Chuen, each received a $1500 travel scholarship from the University Library to attend an Open Access conference in Washington DC.

Batist and Chuen will use the funds to attend OpenCon*, a three-day open access conference taking place next month in Washington DC. They will then share their findings to help inform the development of open access initiatives at McMaster.

According to University Librarian Vivian Lewis, Batist and Chuen were selected from a large pool of talented graduate students vying for the awards.

“The selection panel was struck by the calibre of the candidates, many of whom already displayed strong commitment to expanding the dissemination of scholarly output,” says Lewis.  “We look forward to working with Zack and Lorraine on their return to help formulate effective strategies for supporting Open Access on campus.”

This announcement came during Open Access Week (Oct. 20-24), a week of events aimed at informing faculty and students about the ways McMaster and other institutions are working toward making online scholarly publications more easily accessible to researchers.

Learn more about Open Access at McMaster

*OpenCon is intended to inspire the next generation of scholars to change how research outputs are shared through open access, open data and open educational resources.