Elsevier Honors Portland State with Karen Hunter Memorial Award

NISO Member News

Amsterdam, NL | April 14, 2021

Elsevier, a global leader in research publishing and information analytics, is pleased to announce Portland State University as the winner of the 3rd Annual Karen Hunter Memorial Award. The Karen Hunter award recognizes and encourages collaborations that advance information dissemination via technology. Awardees receive US$5000 and support to attend 2021 ACRL Virtual Conference, where an award reception will be hosted.

The team at Portland State University Library demonstrated an extraordinary commitment to the promotion and publication of openly licensed textbooks in order to save students money, increase student retention rates and improve student learning through the development of the PDXOpen initiative.

PDXOpen has provided a tremendous impact on student learning and empowering instructors to engage in new pedagogical models to focus on increasing student success and engagement.

Karen Bjork, Head of Digital Initiatives & Scholarly Publishing said: “Our open access textbook publishing initiative, PDXOpen provides the essential service of saving students money while increasing the visibility of our University scholars.  PDXOpen supports another core PSU Library value — student success — and we are able to develop partnerships across campus with faculty, students and others who share these goals.”

The Portland State University library team involved in the creation and success of the PDXOpen initiative are Karen Bjork;  Amy Stanforth, Student Success Librarian; Stephanie Doig, Library Office Manager; and Tammy Klupar, Library Office Coordinator.

Gwen Evans, Vice President of Global Library Relations, Elsevier said, “Libraries and publishers have productively worked together to offer and implement e-resources, technology, and services. PDXOpen is an exemplary example of how libraries are experimenting and innovating by finding new ways to deliver content and help faculty facilitate remote instruction. The Karen Hunter Memorial Award is one way for us to continue to celebrate and bring visibility to these important library achievements.”

The Elsevier Karen Hunter Memorial Award was established in 2018 to honor Karen’s legacy. In her four decades at Elsevier, Karen led groundbreaking initiatives in scholarly communications in partnership with the research community. You can read more about Karen and her contributions here.

About This Organization

As a global leader in information and analytics, Elsevier helps researchers and healthcare professionals advance science and improve health outcomes for the benefit of society. We do this by facilitating insights and critical decision-making for customers across the global research and health ecosystems.

In everything we publish, we uphold the highest standards of quality and integrity. We bring that same rigor to our information analytics solutions for researchers, health professionals, institutions and funders.

Elsevier employs 8,100 people worldwide. We have supported the work of our research and health partners for more than 140 years. Growing from our roots in publishing, we offer knowledge and valuable analytics that help our users make breakthroughs and drive societal progress. Digital solutions such as ScienceDirect, Scopus, SciVal, ClinicalKey and Sherpath support strategic research management, R&D performance, clinical decision support, and health education. Researchers and healthcare professionals rely on our 2,500+ digitized journals, including The Lancet and Cell; our 40,000 eBook titles; and our iconic reference works, such as Gray's Anatomy. With the Elsevier Foundation and our external Inclusion & Diversity Advisory Board, we work in partnership with diverse stakeholders to advance inclusion and diversity in science, research and healthcare in developing countries and around the world.

Elsevier is part of RELX, a global provider of information-based analytics and decision tools for professional and business customers. www.elsevier.com.