SPARC Europe Award for Outstanding Achievements in Scholarly Communications - 2008

["David Prosser" <david.prosser@bodley.ox.ac.uk>]

Press Release

Leo Waaijers Receives SPARC Europe Award for Outstanding 
Achievements in Scholarly Communications, 2008


April 22, 2008

For more information, contact: David Prosser,
david.prosser@bodley.ox.ac.uk

LUND, Sweden - As part of the Fourth Nordic Conference on 
Scholarly Communications, held at the University of Lund in 
Sweden, Dr Leo Waaijers has been presented with the 2008 SPARC 
Europe Award for Outstanding Achievements in Scholarly 
Communications.

SPARC (the Scholarly Publishing and Academic Resources Coalition) 
Europe initiated the Award in 2006 to recognise the work of an 
individual or group within Europe that has made significant 
advances in our understanding of the issues surrounding scholarly 
communications and/or in developing practical means to address 
the problems with the current systems. In making the Award to Dr 
Waaijers the judging panel noted his tireless support for new 
models of scholarly communication and his innovative approach to 
repositories and their promotion, especially as initiator of the 
DARE programme and manager of DAREnet.

As manager of the SURF Platform ICT and Research, Dr Waaijers has 
initiated a number of important projects within the Netherlands, 
including the original DARE programme, the Keur der Wetenschap 
(Cream of Science) initiative and the honDAREduizend - or 
HunDAREdthousand - project.  In addition, his influence as been 
felt throughout Europe and beyond as a widely-travelled advocate, 
initiator of the 2007 petition to the European Commission, and an 
important player in the DRIVER and DRIVER II programmes.

Wim Liebrand, director of SURF commented "Leo Waaijers deserves 
this tangible recognition for his work in the world of libraries, 
information technology and Open Access. We all know that Leo has 
been highly effective in his energetic attempts to improve the 
easier dissemination of knowledge. And that has had a direct and 
beneficial impact on both research and educational environments. 
Leo has guided the Netherlands to a lead position in supporting 
the fast changing world of scholarly communication and we, at 
SURF, are proud of that."

Leo Waaijers said "Open Access is also about sharing inspiration, 
best practices and knowledge within the OA community itself. This 
has been the key success factor of DAREnet. For me, the SPARC 
Europe Award is recognizing exactly this. It is a great stimulus 
to proceed with this modus operandi.'

This is the third time the SPARC Europe Award for Outstanding 
Achievements in Scholarly Communications has been made.  The 
first Award, in 2006, went to the Wellcome Trust and the second 
in 2007 to the SHERPA Group.

SPARC Europe <http://www.sparceurope.org/> is an alliance of 110 
research-led university libraries from 14 European countries. It 
is affiliated with SPARC <http://www.arl.org/sparc/> based in 
Washington, D.C., which represents over 200 institutions, mainly 
in North America. SPARC Europe and SPARC work to develop and 
promote new models of scholarly communication that increase the 
access to and utility of the research literature.

About SURF

SURF is the collaborative organisation for academic universities, 
universities of applied sciences and research institutions aimed 
at breakthrough innovations in ICT. SURF supports higher 
education and research in taking optimum advantage of the 
possibilities offered by ICT to improve the quality of education 
and research. SURF provides the foundation for the excellence of 
higher education and research in the Netherlands.

More information on DRIVER: www.driver-community.eu
<http://www.driver-community.eu/>

More information on SURFshare: www.surf.nl/surfshare