Harold Varmus; Former Director, National Institutes of Health: Champion of Open Access
Nobel laureate Harold Varmus was one of the driving forces of medical research even before he tried to revolutionize the way scientists do their work. In the 1970s Varmus and his colleague Michael Bishop discovered the cellular origin of retroviral genes that turn cancerous, launching the modern era of cancer research.
In the Clinton administration, Varmus led the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and transformed it into a biomedical powerhouse. “As director of NIH, Harold cultivated bipartisan support of biomedical research,” Bishop recalls, “and sound science was always at the heart of the agenda.”
Varmus’s latest challenge has been an attempt to overhaul the system of publishing research in journals so that all papers are freely available on the Internet —instead of only by expensive subscription. This allows researchers at any level of income, in any part of the world, to build on the body of knowledge. The manifestation of Varmus’s effort, the Public Library of Science and its roster of academic publications, has become one of the most cited sources in academic research and has inspired others worldwide to follow its lead.
Posted by
Peter Suber at 11/26/2008 07:13:00 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.
