...The [high-energy physics (HEP)] community pioneered open access through “repositories” containing collections of pre-prints freely accessible on the internet....
However, peer-review, which verifies the quality of an article submitted for publication, is not performed in repositories....
High-quality HEP journals are essential for the community, because the journals provide the peer-review service....
A new model for open access publishing has emerged, aiming to convert the entire body of HEP literature to open access. The publisher’s subscription income from multiple institutions would be replaced by income from a single financial partner: the Sponsoring Consortium for Open Access Publishing in Particle Physics (SCOAP3)....
According to the model, partners from all countries contributing to HEP literature would become members of the consortium....
At this time, most European countries have agreed to participate, so did 44 US partners. Turkey, Israel and Australia have also joined the consortium. Discussions are in progress with several countries in Asia, such as India, China and Japan, said Vigen. While about 50 percent of the funds have been pledged, the consortium will not start approaching the publishers officially yet. “We need to have important players on board, like Japan and China, before going to the publishers,” he said.
Although formal discussions with the publishers have not officially started, the consortium indicates that publishers show a pro-active attitude of support to open access in HEP. Publishers would benefit from a more sustainable model and researchers will have a broad access to peer-reviewed articles, according to the SCOAP3 working party....
Once the process of securing the budget and negotiations are achieved, the consortium will establish governance and become active. It will be run by CERN. According to Vigen, “CERN management has offered that CERN runs the consortium as an in-kind contribution to the consortium, no charges will be carried by members.”
The consortium is expecting an impending launch. “The timeframe for launching the consortium is linked to the negotiations with potential partners, mainly in Asia, in order to have a global distribution of partners, but hopefully it will be launched in 2009,” said Vigen.
Once it reaches critical mass, SCOAP3 will be formally established and its governance put in place. SCOAP3 will then issue its call for tender to publishers, in order to assess the exact cost of its operation, and then move forward with negotiating and placing contracts with publishers....
If the SCOAP3 project is successful, all articles published within the SCOAP3 framework will be copied and stored in [the] INSPIRE [OA repository], which then will store both pre-prints and peer-reviewed articles.
Update (1/7/09). Also see Stefan Krempl's overview of SCOAP3 in the January 6 Heise Online, in German or Google's English.
Posted by
Peter Suber at 1/05/2009 10:49:00 AM.
The open access movement:
Putting peer-reviewed scientific and scholarly literature
on the internet. Making it available free of charge and
free of most copyright and licensing restrictions.
Removing the barriers to serious research.
I recommend the OA tracking project (OATP) as the best way to stay on top of new OA developments. You can read the OATP feed on a blog-like web page or subscribe to it by RSS, email, or Twitter. You can also help build the feed by tagging new developments you encounter.
