John Willinsky is a Canadian educator, activist, and author.

Willinsky is currently on the faculty of the Stanford University School of Education

Stanford University School of Education

The Stanford University School of Education , is one of the seven schools of Stanford University. It is the second-oldest school of education in the United States, after NYU...

. Until 2007 he was the Pacific Press Professor of Literacy and Technology and Distinguished University Scholar in the Department of Language and Literacy Education at the University of British Columbia

University of British Columbia

The University of British Columbia is a public research university. UBC’s two main campuses are situated in Vancouver and in Kelowna in the Okanagan Valley...

 (UBC). He is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada

Royal Society of Canada

The Royal Society of Canada , may also operate under the more descriptive name RSC: The Academies of Arts, Humanities and Sciences of Canada , is the oldest association of scientists and scholars in Canada...

.

Born in Toronto

Toronto

Toronto is the provincial capital of Ontario and the largest city in Canada. It is located in Southern Ontario on the northwestern shore of Lake Ontario. A relatively modern city, Toronto's history dates back to the late-18th century, when its land was first purchased by the British monarchy from...

, Ontario

Ontario

Ontario is a province of Canada, located in east-central Canada. It is Canada's most populous province and second largest in total area. It is home to the nation's most populous city, Toronto, and the nation's capital, Ottawa....

, Willinsky taught school in Ontario for 10 years and, with Vivian Forssman, developed the Information Technology Management program for high schools in British Columbia and Ontario. He is the author of Empire of Words: The Reign of the OED, Learning to Divide the World: Education at Empire's End, which won Outstanding Book Awards from the American Educational Research Association

American Educational Research Association

The American Educational Research Association, or AERA, was founded in 1916 as a professional organization representing educational researchers in the United States and around the world....

 and History of Education Society, as well as the more recent titles, Technologies of Knowing, If Only We Knew: Increasing the Public Value of Social Science Research and The Access Principle: The Case for Open Access to Research and Scholarship -- the latter of which has won the 2006 Blackwell's Scholarship Award and the Computers and Composition Distinguished Book Award.

He retains a partial appointment at UBC where he directs the Public Knowledge Project

Public Knowledge Project

The Public Knowledge Project is a non-profit research initiative of the Faculty of Education at the University of British Columbia, the Canadian Centre for Studies in Publishing at Simon Fraser University, the Simon Fraser University Library , and Stanford University...

, which is researching systems that hold promise for improving the scholarly and public quality of academic research. In October, 2009 he was awarded an honorary Doctor of Laws degree from Simon Fraser University for his contribution to scholarly communication.

External links

• Stanford Educator, Fall 2007 reporting Willinsky's move to Stanford
• John Willinsky, Stanford faculty listing
• PKP Homepage, Public Knowledge Project Homepage (under Willinsky's direction)
• Open Access recorded talks and speeches by John Willinsky via Wikimedia Commons
• The Access Principle by John Willinsky, MIT Press, 2006; full-text is downloadable after free registration
• Peter Schmidt. (2010, February 14). New Journals, Free Online, Let Scholars Speak Out. Chronicle of Higher Education.