Jeremy Berg, the former director of the US National Institute of General Medical Sciences, has been named the next editor in chief of Science magazine and its related journals, according to the American Association for the Advancement of Science. Berg, currently an administrator at the University of Pittsburgh, will succeed Marcia McNutt, who has been elected president of the National Academy of Sciences.
In a statement, Berg says his is "thrilled and humbled" by his appointment. "Effective communication of results as well as key aspects of the scientific process and culture has never been more important," he adds.
Berg also has a history of supporting transparency, the blogger DrugMonkey notes. While at NIGMS, Berg ran a blog called The Feedback Loop where he discussed the agency's use of data in its decision-making processes, and then after he left for Pitt, he continued to press the National Institutes of Health for grants data that he then posted on his DataHound blog. In addition, Retraction Watch's Shannon Palus adds that Berg co-authored an article appearing in Science last week that urged biomedical researchers to make better use of preprint servers.
"I look forward to a new era at Science magazine with an EIC who prefers that institutions make their decisions based on data and that they be as transparent as possible about their processes," DrugMonkey says at his blog.
Berg will take over the Science post the first of July.