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 January2009. His mandate will cover the early years of operation and firstscientific results from the Laboratory’s new flagship researchfacility, the Large Hadron Collider (LHC), scheduled to begin operationin 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 GermanHigh-Energy Physics laboratory, is also an Open Access supporter. Hewas among the signatories of the first Expression of Interest to reachSCOAP3, 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 abouthigh-energy physics experiments and theories. Increased choice anddiversity is a benefit to all, leading to a healthy and dynamic marketin academic publishing in particle physics, in line with the spirit ofSCOAP3.”