Tom Daschle has withdrawn his name from consideration as Barack Obama's Secretary of Health and Human Services. He was expected to be confirmed by the Senate, but damaged by his failure to pay $140,000 in personal income tax until after Obama nominated him. More coverage.
Daschle is a former Senator from South Dakota (1987-2005), former Senate majority leader (2001-2003), and co-author of a book on reforming the US health care system. As far as I can tell, he had no public track record on OA issues.
The OA connection: The National Institutes of Health (NIH) belongs to the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), giving the next HHS Secretary significant control over the future of OA in the US federal government. The position of NIH Director is also vacant and will probably remain vacant until we have a new HHS Secretary. Stay tuned.
Posted by
Peter Suber at 2/03/2009 05:20:00 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.
