Peter Suber - Google+ - Tribute to Mark Walport Last night in London, some friends…

Mark Walport, who is leaving his 10-year stint as Director of the Wellcome Trust to take on the post of Chief Scientific Adviser for the UK. I wrote this testimonial for the occasion, and thank +Mark Patterson for including parts of it in his presentation to the guests: The open-access movement is large, and many people are true leaders on one front or another. But under Mark Walport's leadership, the Wellcome Trust has been the very first or among the very first research funders to take action on half a dozen important fronts. It was a leader in requiring open access to peer-reviewed articles arising from its research grants. It was a leader in requiring rights retention to assure the legality of green open access, and to deprive publishers of a veto. It was a leader in paying article processing charges for gold open access. It was a leader in requiring open data, in addition to open research articles. It was a leader in requiring open licensing, or libre open access. It was even a leader in digitizing print collections, and providing retroactive open access to previously published literature, even for orphan works that were not yet in the public domain. Some of these pioneering policies are now years old, and have inspired parallel action from other organizations. But on each of these fronts, Wellcome is still ahead of the pack. Other funding agencies are catching up, but have a lot of catching up to do."