Library faculty team up with undergraduate student to promote open access

Posted on April 27, 2022 by Christine Fena

In the opening paragraph of his recent post to the Program in Writing and Rhetoric’s RhetComp blog, student Matt Hono explains a typical undergraduate experience of using databases to write a research paper: “Overwhelmed with the simple goal of finishing a paper, I hardly thought about or questioned the big business of academic journal publishing. I never considered the privilege of having a giant university database at my disposal.”

After hearing a little bit about open access when University Libraries’ Undergraduate Success Librarian, Christine Fena, led a library orientation for his tutoring group at the Academic Success Tutoring Center, Matt reached out wanting to know more. As it turns out, Matt did have some excellent questions! He explored them in detail through a conversation with Head of Scholarly Communication, Mona Ramonetti. Mona was able to clarify and expand upon a variety of issues related to open access and open educational resources. Here is his thorough and thoughtful discussion of the topic from a student perspective, “Tearing Down the Paywall: A Conversation on Open Access and Education.”

Give it a read – It’s a wonderful example of faculty/student collaboration to share and inform the SBU community!