Melissa Chim

Melissa Chim is the first Scholarly Communications Librarian at Excelsior University, where she both created and manages the university’s scholarly publishing platform and institutional repository. She holds an MLIS from St. John’s University and an MA in History from Queen Mary, the University of London. Her research interests include Open Educational Resources (OER) publishing, open pedagogy, and teaching with primary sources. With a background as a historian and librarian spanning over a decade, Melissa regularly supports open access publishing in the humanities.

As an advocate for open education, Melissa holds a certificate in Creative Commons licensing and works extensively with the Open Education Network, DOAJ, and FORCE11. She was a SPARC Open Education Leadership Fellow for their 2022–23 cohort, a Society for Scholarly Publishing Fellow for 2024, and an ASAPbio Fellow and Resident for 2025–2026. She is currently editing a volume on open pedagogy to be published in 2027.

Melissa’s work as a historian includes a co-authored OER textbook entitled Living Archives: A History of the Center for Christian Spirituality and the OER textbook Past Makes Perfect: A Mini Handbook for Student Historians. She has been featured in media outlets as a historical consultant for programs including The Shaye Ganam Show and ABC Nightlife Australia. She was named an Associate Fellow with the Royal Historical Society in 2026.