Nicholas Cozzarelli, molecular biologist at Berkeley and Editor-in-Chief of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS), died at his Berkeley home on Sunday. He was 67. From the obituary in the UC Berkeley News:
As editor-in-chief since 1995 of the main publication of the National Academy of Sciences, Cozzarelli changed the journal's methods for reviewing submitted manuscripts, according to Botchan, making it a scientific publication that now vies for prestige with the best.
"Nick deserves almost the entire credit for making PNAS a high impact journal," said Arthur Kornberg, Nobel laureate and Stanford University professor emeritus of biochemistry. Cozzarelli was a post-doctoral fellow in Kornberg's laboratory from 1966 until 1968.
Cozzarelli also was a champion of open access publishing, that is, allowing the public, not just a journal's paid subscribers, to read scientific articles. PNAS was one of the first publications to alter its policy and allow free public access via the Internet, although its high-profile competitor publications have yet to follow suit....He was on the editorial boards of many publications, including the first open access journal, the Public Library of Science (PLoS) Biology.
PS: On OA issues, and many others, Cozzarelli was a leader among editors of high-prestige, high-impact journals. He grasped the argument for OA very early and his willingness to experiment with PNAS was bold and canny. He will be missed.
Posted by
Peter Suber at 3/21/2006 06:11:00 PM.
The open access movement:
Putting peer-reviewed scientific and scholarly literature
on the internet. Making it available free of charge and
free of most copyright and licensing restrictions.
Removing the barriers to serious research.
I recommend the OA tracking project (OATP) as the best way to stay on top of new OA developments. You can read the OATP feed on a blog-like web page or subscribe to it by RSS, email, or Twitter. You can also help build the feed by tagging new developments you encounter.
