CERN has announced that the SCOAP³ Open Access publishing initiative will begin January 1st 2014.

10 journals are participating to start (1).  CERN says this is the largest scale global Open Access initiative ever built, involving an international collaboration of over one thousand libraries, library consortia and research organizations.

The objective of SCOAP³ is to grant unrestricted access to scientific articles appearing in scientific journals, which so far have only been available to scientists through certain university libraries. Open dissemination of preliminary information, in the form of pre-peer-review articles known as preprints, has been the norm in High-Energy Physics and related disciplines for two decades. SCOAP³  extends this opportunity to high-quality peer-review service, making final version of articles available, within the Open Access tenets of free and unrestricted dissemination of science with intellectual property rights vested in the authors and wide re-use opportunities.

In the SCOAP³ model, libraries and funding agencies pool resources currently used to subscribe to journals, in co-operation with publishers, and use them to support the peer-review system directly instead.

“International cooperation and dissemination of information have been enshrined in the CERN Convention for sixty years,” said CERN Director General Rolf Heuer. “I am proud that we have leveraged CERN’s convening power and made such an unprecedented Open Access initiative a reality. I am indebted to all those leaders in libraries, funding agencies, the publishing industry who have accompanied us on this path. This is their success, and we look forward to welcoming more collaborators to this global initiative.”

“This is the culmination of a fascinating journey,” said Salvatore Mele, Head of Open Access at CERN and leader of the SCOAP³ project. “In the last few years we have built consensus and trust between all parties: libraries, funding agencies and publishers, at the service of scientists in the field of High-Energy Physics and beyond. Most importantly, we have nurtured a community of partners, making a real difference, enhancing the Open Access movement and the publishing industry.”

Note

1. The following publishers and scientific societies are participating with 10 peer-reviewed journals in the field of High-Energy Physics and related disciplines: Chinese Academy of Sciences, Deutsche Physikalische Gesellschaft, Elsevier, Hindawi, Institute of Physics Publishing, Jagellonian University, Oxford University Press, Physical Society of Japan, SISSA Medialab, Springer, Società Italiana di Fisica.