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AGI: Arbeitsgruppe Information

AGI 2: Wissenschaftliches Publizieren (mit AGjDPG)

AGI 2.1: Invited Talk

Tuesday, March 3, 2009, 11:00–11:30, VMP 8 R206

SCOAP3 : converting the peer-reviewed HEP literature to Open Access — •Jens Vigen — CERN, 1211 Geneva, Switzerland

The debate on Open Access raves on but stays, in many quarters, just a debate. The High-Energy Physics community, which spearheaded Open Access with over half a century of dissemination of pre-prints culminating in the arXiv system, is now pushing forward with an Open Access model which goes beyond the present, often controversial, proposals with a novel practical approach.

This new model is called the Sponsoring Consortium for Open Access Publishing in Particle Physics (SCOAP3). In the SCOAP3 model, libraries federate to explicitly cover the costs of peer-review rather than implicitly supporting it via journal subscriptions. Rather than selling subscriptions, journals will charge for the peer-review service and make the electronic versions of their journals free to read. Unlike many *author-pays* Open Access models, authors are not directly charged to publish their articles in the Open Access paradigm. Contributions to the SCOAP3 consortium would come on a nation-wide re-direction of current library subscriptions to High-Energy Physics journals. These contributions are determined on a country-by-country basis, according to the volume of High-Energy Physics publications originating from that country, taking into account co-authorship. SCOAP3 will negotiate with major publishers in the field the price of their peer review services through a tendering process, linking, possibly for the first time, quality, volume and price in scientific publishing.