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October 29th, 2025
WEST LAFAYETTE, Ind.—Purdue University Libraries and School of Information Studies is pleased to recognize Wilella Burgess, director of the Evaluation and Learning Research Center, at Purdue University, with the 2025 Leadership in Open Access Award. The award has been given annually since 2010 in recognition of exceptional commitment to broadening the reach of scholarship by making Purdue research freely accessible online.
Burgess and her research team published a series of datasets in the Purdue University Research Repository (PURR), developed through a project conducted in collaboration with the country of Somalia. The project examined the impact of various primary education models on a diverse population of learners in Somalia. Findings from this evaluation will help inform future programming and guide policy decisions by Somalia’s Ministry of Education.
In addition to publishing the datasets on PURR, Burgess and her research team partnered with the Purdue Libraries Scholarly Publishing Division to make the project reports and related scholarly works openly accessible through Purdue e-Pubs, the university’s institutional repository. Publications in Purdue e-Pubs are freely available to a global audience and are automatically indexed in Google Scholar, enhancing their visibility and discoverability. By collaborating with the Purdue e-Pubs team, Burgess and her team ensured that articles resulting from the USAID-funded project are preserved and accessible to the public.
Burgess’s work demonstrates how publicly-funded research, when shared openly, can inform evidence-based policy, empower stakeholders, and drive positive change on an international scale.
Open Access Week
October 20–26, 2025 was International Open Access Week. This year’s theme, “Who Owns Our Knowledge,” asks how, in a time of disruption, communities can reclaim control over knowledge while prompting reflection on who accesses, creates, and shares it—and whose voices are valued.
Open Access publishing provides free, immediate access to scholarly literature, removing paywalls and reuse restrictions. For more than 20 years, Open Access publishing has paved the way to greater transparency in scientific research, providing a model for other open scholarship endeavors including open data, open peer review, and open science.
Purdue Libraries and Open Access
Libraries and School of Information Studies remains an avid advocate for open access publishing, aligning with the institution’s land-grant mission of learning, discovery, and engagement. Purdue’s commitment to open access began with Open Access Day in 2008, and the university has actively participated in International Open Access Week since its establishment in 2009.
In 2020, Purdue Libraries, with support from the Dean’s Advisory Council and generous donors, established an endowment to promote a sustainable and transparent system of scholarly research. This endowment has enabled Libraries to contribute to innovative open access publishing initiatives, further solidifying Purdue’s commitment to open scholarship.
Purdue Libraries negotiates with publishers to provide free Open Access publishing opportunities—its current Open Access Publishing Partnerships are a result of these negotiations. When publishing in journals that qualify under these agreements, Purdue authors can select Open Access publishing options at no cost.
Authors have access to additional services and support, including support for posting works to Purdue e-Pubs, Purdue’s institutional repository for scholarly documents. As an open access service, scholarly works posted to Purdue e-Pubs are freely available to a global audience and benefit from wide availability and discovery.
Most publishers allow authors to post a version of their scholarship to an institutional repository. Purdue Libraries offers a free CV review service, and authors who wish to participate need only to share a list of publications or their ORCID iD. Purdue e-Pubs staff will review publisher sharing policies and inform authors that their works can be made openly available at no cost.
For more information, contact openaccess@purdue.edu.
About Purdue University Libraries and School of Information Studies
Purdue University Libraries and School of Information Studies, a unit of Purdue University, aims to create and provide equitable access to diverse resources, outstanding services, and innovative spaces by pioneering new methods in information science and advancing knowledge to meet the evolving information needs of the future. To learn more, visit lib.purdue.edu.
Filed under: general, News and Announcements, Open_Access