Open Access News

In preparation for its meeting next week, Establishing a sponsoring consortium for Open Access publishing in particle physics (Geneva, November 3, 2006), CERN has posted some background documents for the participants.  (Thanks to Jens Vigen.)

From the briefing document:

A meeting has been called at CERN on November 3rd 2006 to work towards establishing a consortium of major particle physics funding agencies, aimed at guiding a transition of the current subscription model for journals to a more stable, more competitive and more affordable future for the dissemination of quality-assured scientific information adapted to the era of electronic publishing....

The [June 2006] report concluded that as a number of journals in the field were ready to experiment with OA, and as a number of large research institutions were ready to support these titles both financially and by author encouragement, the remaining action necessary was to make a funding arrangement, called SCOAP3 – a Sponsoring Consortium for Open Access Publishing in Particle Physics.

In summary, the publishers of the main journals are ready to offer author-fee publishing and enter into discussions about OA publishing. The research community itself is better educated than ever before about the problems with the current model and the necessity for a shift. The world outside physics is moving in the same direction. The remaining challenge is to reorganize funding of publication and to raise funds to support the transition to the new system. The particle physics publishing sphere will again become stable and the various players can benefit from the technical efficiencies that an OA landscape should enable....

Based on the cost per article quoted by the publishers, and the number of articles published in the period 2003-2005, sponsoring all journals ready for OA at the time of the task force enquiry would have required an annual budget of 5-6 M€. To start a significant OA exercise today, it is estimated that at least 3 M€/year will be needed. It should be noted that this sum is significantly less than the present global expenditure for particle physics journal subscriptions....

The consortium will offer to collaborate with all publishers proposing OA solutions. However, only journals corresponding to a set of criteria to be defined by the consortium will enjoy financial sponsorship. To ensure academic freedom for the particle physics community the consortium will commit itself to raise sufficient funds to ensure the availability of more than one journal title for each related sub-discipline. It is expected that the purchasing power of the consortium will have a significant influence on the publishing market.

Tentatively a transition period of 3-5 years should be envisaged to allow time for grant cycles to be adapted to author-side financing of publishing costs and for publishers to fine tune their OA policies....

A risk inherent in this model is that the community pays twice for a journal, namely for the subscription and for the article fees. Therefore, to profit from consortium sponsoring, publishers must make a firm commitment to lower the subscriptions. By this means, SCOAP3 can target individual journals for maximum cost reduction impact. Funding agencies must immediately introduce a mandate so that after the transition period all grants will require OA publication and include funds to cover such costs. After this time the role of SCOAP3 will be re-evaluated.

CERN invites institutions who support the plan to email their comments and has already posted two of the letters of support.  One letter is from the Deutsches Elektronen-Synchrotron (DESY):

DESY fully supports Open Access Publishing in Particle Physics and we would like to see it realized within a short time scale.  It is of great importance for DESY to be actively and constructively involved in the forthcoming discussions aiming at establishing a Sponsoring Consortium.  Hence, the DESY Research Director, Professor Dr. Rolf-Dieter Heuer, will participate in the first CERN meeting on this subject on November 3, 2006.

Another supporting letter is from the University of Patras in Greece:

At the University of Patras we are closely following the new trends in dissemination of scientific results and we have a strong belief in that if the ideas of the open access movement will be generally adopted by the community, it will imply better access to science both for researchers and the society at large. The Rectorate of the University would therefore like to take the opportunity to express its support (with a symbolic financial support of 5000 CHF) for the personal initiative you have demonstrated by creating a task force to study the situation for particle physics. The report, which we have read with great interest, has certainly the potential to be used as basis for changing the publishing scenery of particle physics, and the model should also be applicable to most other branches of science....

Hopefully the change in the publishing paradigm will lead up to further changes as well. So far the electronic journals have just reproduced the traditional paper journals in an electronic manner. Electronic publishing has though a potential much beyond this....

Comment. For background, see the Report of CERN's Task Force on Open Access Publishing in Particle Physics (June 22, 2006) and my short article about it in SOAN for September 2006.

The CERN plan is the most ambitious OA initiative taking place in any field today.  Nowhere else is any group trying to convert all the journals in a field to OA or to bring the stakeholders together to raise the money to fund a permanent alternative to journal subscriptions.  We'll all be watching with interest.