Open access (OA) and open scholarship encompass a wide variety of supports and initiatives that endeavour to make research, information, and creative works more accessible, more transparent, and more equitable. Benefits can include: 

• lower educational costs 

• increased student participation in learning 

• improved accessibility 

• flexibility 

• ability to reach a larger audience 

Physiotherapy open access volume finds home on eScholarship 

Inviting Movements in Physiotherapy: An Anthology of Critical Scholarship is a research publication of the international Critical Physiotherapy Network (CPN), in collaboration with the College of Rehabilitation Sciences. Produced with the support of the UM Libraries, it is now hosted on eScholarship. 

“The Critical Physiotherapy Network… has deep commitments to sharing ideas and conversations freely. We chose to publish our newest anthology with eScholarship because we are fundamentally committed to open access scholarship,” says Patricia Thille, the lead editor of the anthology and associate professor in the College of Rehabilitation Sciences at the University of Manitoba.  

The book was assessed through an open-identities peer review process, which the CPN used for its earlier volumes published by Routledge and Cappelen Damm. 

The skill and commitment of the eScholarship team, led by OER Specialist Glenn Bergen, was essential to this new volume’s successful publication, Thille says. “Glenn walked through the steps while also working with us to think through future opportunities for this book.”  

Future opportunities include presentations, podcasts, or workshops that could be added to the eScholarship portal to live alongside the book, “creating a cohesive and robust collection of resources,” says Thille. “Book publishing isn’t where eScholarship’s content needs to end.” 

New open educational resources support engagement with learning 

Open educational resources (OER) are teaching resources available in a variety of formats that have an open copyright license, which allows anyone to use, adapt and share them at no cost.  

Resources include: 

• open textbooks 

• online teaching resources 

• interactive lab manuals 

• an open educational resource to support patient and public partners in health research 

Learn more 

UM Libraries has long been an advocate and supporter of the creation and use of open educational scholarship and resources. The Libraries two-year pilot funding project Advance Open Ed has now become a permanent part of the library’s open publishing support system, after having supported 21 OER projects that will impact approximately 7,300 students each year. 

Learn more about supports for open at the University of Manitoba at Open@UM

Browse publications and open teaching materials on eScholarship