Largest-Ever Open Access Publishing Initiative To Start At CERN In January

The European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN) announced today that the largest scientific open access initiative ever will begin on 1 January 2014.

The initiative, called the Sponsoring Consortium for Open Access Publishing in Particle Physics (SCOAP3), has the support of partners in 24 countries and will make available a vast portion of scientific articles in the field of high-energy physics, open access at no cost for any author.

“[E]veryone will be able to read them; authors will retain copyright; and generous licenses will enable wide re-use of this information,” CERN said in a release.

“This is the largest scale global Open Access initiative ever built,” it said, involving an international collaboration of over 1,000 libraries, library consortia and research organizations. SCOAP3 enjoys the support of funding agencies and has been established in co-operation with leading publishers, it noted.

There are 11 publishers of high-quality international journals participating in the initiative. “Elsevier, IOP Publishing and Springer, together with their publishing partners, have been working with the network of SCOAP3 national contact points,” it said. “Reductions in subscription fees for thousands of participating libraries worldwide have been arranged, making funds available for libraries to support SCOAP3.”

According to CERN, SCOAP3 grants unrestricted access to scientific articles in scientific journals, which so far have only been available to scientists through certain university libraries, and generally unavailable to the wider public.

The initiative is looking to expand to other regions.

The CERN press release is available here.