Zerhouni, Author of NIH Public Access Mandate, Steps Down
Andrew Albanese -- Library Journal, 10/9/2008 12:42:00 PM
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Just weeks after giving strong testimony to lawmakers seeking to undo his landmark public access policy, Elias Zerhouni, director of the National Institutes of Health (NIH), announced plans to step down by the end of October. Zerhouni has served as NIH director since May 2002, and among his accomplishments, he pushed through, with heavy support from the library community, the agency’s mandatory public access policy, which took effect in April of this year.
Zerhouni said he had planned to step down before the upcoming presidential election, but the announcement nonetheless came as a surprise. He’ll leave with his policy facing a thorny legislative challenge in the House, the Fair Copyright in Research Act, a bill lobbied for by publishers opposed to the policy.
Peter Suber, on his open access blog, called Zerhouni “a strong friend of OA” who will be missed. “Whether his retirement is a setback for OA will depend on who succeeds him,” Suber noted. Zernhouni has suggested his colleague Raynard King as a likely successor. SPARC director Heather Joseph praised Zerhouni’s work at NIH. “We will definitely miss him,” she told the LJ Academic Newswire, “but the NIH as a whole remains committed to the policy, so we're confident the momentum will keep right on building.”
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