Bruce Alberts, the editor-in-chief of Science, is to leave that post by next March, reports the Nature News Blog. Alberts has led Science since 2008, and Nature notes that "five years is not an unusual tenure" for that position. While at Science, Alberts has been part of talks about whether or not to publish research on a transmissible form of the H5N1 avian flu, and he has worked with the US Science Envoy Program to encourage scientific collaborations with researchers in North Africa, the Middle East, and Southeast Asia.
"Bruce has been a grand steward of Science magazine," says David Baltimore, a Nobel laureate and former AAAS president. "He brought his style to the magazine, by caring so much about education and international science. I'm sorry to hear that he's leaving, but he's given so much to American science that I can't complain that he hasn't done his job."