CERN Council today appointed Professor Rolf-Dieter Heuer as next CERN Director General.
Professor Heuer will serve a five-year term, taking office on 1 January
2009. His mandate will cover the early years of operation and first
scientific results from the Laboratory's new flagship research
facility, the Large Hadron Collider (LHC), scheduled to begin operation
in summer 2008. The present CERN Director General, Dr. Robert Aymar, is
an Open Access advocate
and inspired the SCOAP3 initiative.
Prof. Heuer, currently Research Director at DESY, the German
High-Energy Physics laboratory, is also an Open Access supporter. He
was among the signatories of the first Expression of Interest to reach
SCOAP3,
pledging German financial support to the consortium, and he is a member of the Editorial Board of
PhysMathCentral Physics A, which he calls
"another important step in removing access barriers to knowledge about
high-energy physics experiments and theories. Increased choice and
diversity is a benefit to all, leading to a healthy and dynamic market
in academic publishing in particle physics, in line with the spirit of
SCOAP3."
14/12/2007, CERN Council appoints Open Access supporter as next Director General
