Hugh Tilson, an Environmental Protection Agency administrator, is the new editor-in-chief of Environmental Health Perspectives, the flagship journal of the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences. As we recently reported, he was on the short list of candidates for the position. Tilson will take up his post at NIEHS later this month and will officially start as EHP?s top editor at the beginning of 2008.

Tilson, a neurotoxicologist at NIEHS before becoming director of the EPA's neurotoxicology division in 1989, inherits a journal that has been involved in recent controversies at the institute. David Schwartz, the former NIEHS director who stepped down earlier this year while NIH and independent investigators look into allegations of mismanagement, attempted to privatize EHP in 2005, and suggested cutting the journal's budget in 2006.

EHP, one of the first journals to go open-access, has survived the storm of Schwartz's questionable leadership, and acting director Samuel Wilson seems to be righting the NIEHS ship.

According to the NIH press release announcing Tilson's hiring as EHP editor-in-chief, the journal will remain open-access and its new top editor says he will seek to improve EHP. "I intend to make it an even more powerful, user-friendly resource," Tilson is quoted saying in the press release.