CERN, the European Organization for Nuclear Research, has announced that the SCOAP3 Open Access publishing initiative will start January 1, 2014. With the support of partners in 24 countries, a vast fraction of scientific articles in the field of High-Energy Physics will become Open Access at no cost for any author: everyone will be able to read them; authors will retain copyright; and generous licenses will enable wide re-use of this information.
Convened at CERN this is the largest scale global Open Access initiative ever built, involving an international collaboration of over one thousand libraries, library consortia and research organisations. SCOAP3 enjoys the support of funding agencies and has been established in co-operation with leading publishers.
Eleven publishers of high quality international journals are participating in SCOAP3. Elsevier, IOP Publishing and Springer, together with their publishing partners, have been working with the network of SCOAP3 national contact points. Reductions in subscription fees for thousands of participating libraries worldwide have been arranged, making funds available for libraries to support SCOAP3.
The SCOAP3 initiative looks forward to establishing further partnerships in the Asia-Pacific region, the Americas, Europe, Africa and the Middle East, where scientists will enjoy the advantages of Open Access and many libraries and library consortia will benefit from reductions in their subscription costs.
