SPARC Europe Award for Outstanding Achievements in Scholarly Communications - 2008

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.prosserbodley.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.sparceurop
e.org/> is an alliance of 110 
research-led university libraries from 14 European
countries. It 
is affiliated with SPARC <http://www.arl.org/spar
c/> 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