Fostering access to educational and research resources is the name of the game for libraries. Erin Alcock, a science research liason librarian at the Queen Elizabeth II Library, has worked to support open access publishing for 15 years. By helping researchers understand open access publishing and supporting their work to develop, adapt or adopt open educational resources, Ms. Alcock and her colleagues are growing support for and the impact of open scholarly approaches.

As an educator from South Africa, broadening access to education in the Global South is an important priority for Dr. Cecile Badenhorst, a professor in the adult post-secondary education program in the Faculty of Education. She created a YouTube channel and began filming videos about academic writing as a way to connect instructors and students in South Africa. Those videos have found a wider audience than she ever imagined, reaching thousands of students and teachers across the world. "It's made me realize that the work that I'm doing is useful and important," Dr. Badenhorst said.

There's no such thing as a perfect textbook — but Dr. Amanda Bittner, a professor in the Department of Political Science, found that using a variety of open educational resources can get close by improving accessibility. Whether she's teaching undergraduate or graduate students, Dr. Bittner tries to incorporate open textbooks and other materials they can access at no cost. "Making use of those kinds of materials and making them available, and also assigning them to students, is one way to cut down on the costs associated with education," Dr. Bittner said.

The discipline of social work involves collaboration and information sharing with people outside of academia — in particular, with social work practitioners and people with relevant lived experiences. The need for that collaboration is why Dr. Ami Goulden, an assistant professor in the School of Social Work, values open access and open education. Eliminating obstacles to research and education plays an important role in broadening access to information and resources and fostering the work of her field, Dr. Goulden said.

As a professor in the Department of Geography, Dr. Max Liboiron is knowledgeable about the open science movement and collaborative approaches to scholarship and teaching. That background informed their decision to create an open online course and embrace its adaptation and recontextualization as it's used by new teachers and learners. As a result, Dr. Liboiron has learned new things about the materials and the course's Canada-based research and examples have reached international audiences. 

Faced with frustration about the textbooks available to him, Dr. Aaron Tucker, an assistant professor in the Department of English, began talking to a colleague, Dr. Paul Chafe of Toronto Metropolitan University. The two wanted to find a textbook that was not only more adaptable and flexible but also better suited to the kind of classroom they wanted to engage with and produce — one that brought a lot of writing, editing and feedback into the classrooms itself. Write Here, Right Now, an open education textbook, was the result of those conversations.

As a research, a lot of Dr. Yolanda Wiersma's work directly relates to applied problems in conservation, ecological issues and the environment. As a result, her findings are often of interest to people who might not be able to easily access scholarly publications: Indigenous groups, non-governmental organizations, small not-for-profits, etc. By publishing her research papers as open access whenever possible, Dr. Wiersma, a professor in the Department of Biology, ensures her work is accessible to as many people as possible, including the communities that helped facilitate her research.