The Montana State University Library has taken an initiative towards making important physics research more widely accessible.
The library recently signed on to participate in Sponsoring Consortium for Open Access Publishing in Particle Physics (SCOAP3), a program that makes peer-reviewed literature on particle physics open to everyone. Traditionally, in order to access leading journal articles on particle physics, people seeking those articles would have to purchase a subscription to the journal in which the article appeared, or their university would have to have purchased a subscription.
SCOAP3 is an international group of university libraries, funding agencies and research institutions that have redirected their subscription fees from 10 leading particle physics journals to membership in the consortium.
SCOAP3 then pays the journals to make hundreds of articles open to all. As a result, the materials can be accessed freely by anyone in the world, and the journals still get paid.
SCOAP3 is not MSU's only foray into open access initiatives. MSU also recently signed on to participate in another group known as Knowledge Unlatched, which offers open access to a pilot collection of 28 books. In addition, the MSU Library maintains ScholarWorks, an open access repository for articles and other intellectual work produced at MSU in support of the university's teaching, research and service missions.
Individuals who would like to access particle physics articles through SCOAP3's online repository are invited to visit http://repo.scoap3.org/.
