Emilia Jarochowska, Assistant Professor, Earth Sciences, Utrecht University

I teach at one of the most prestigious university programmes in geosciences in Europe, and yet I cannot afford to use up-to-date research in my teaching materials. 

At Utrecht University, we train future experts and keep our teaching abreast of new discoveries. Most of my teaching is designed as Open Educational Resources, so my fellow teachers can interact with them, reuse and modify them, and give me feedback. However, most novel publications in my field still appear in journals which require a copyright transfer to the publisher, and I would need to pay to reuse every single figure. 

I do not want to break the law, so I omit a lot of recent discoveries in my teaching, because I cannot legally reproduce their fragments.

 Both students and authors suffer from this situation: students do not get access to all research that is relevant to them, and authors do not see their discoveries integrated into the curriculum. 

When I publish, I want others to be able to use my materials in teaching and presentations, so that my research reaches a wider audience. 

Thanks to Diamond Open Access journals I do not have to pay huge fees for my willingness to share my knowledge. My students mostly see materials that have appeared in Open Access journals, but this creates a bias as long as these are only publications by groups who can afford publication fees.