Shirley Stewart Burns at ETD Conference, Carnegie Music Hall, Pittsburgh, PA

Shirley Stewart Burns, a history doctoral alum of West Virginia University, granted open access to her history dissertation on mountain top removal, a dangerous form of strip mining still in use around the world. Her dissertation has received over 120,000 downloads since her graduation in 2005, and she simultaneously revised her dissertation and published it as a book with the West Virginia University Press. She is publishing a second book and has served as a consultant for a major film documentary "Coal Country". Shirley recounts the impact of open access on her life and as an impetus for social, political and environmental change.

Category:

Education

Tags:

• open access
• humanities
• Shirley Burns
• West Virginia University