The CNRS Institut de physique nucléaire et de physique des particules (IN2P3) has just signed an agreement with the Journal of High Energy Physics stating that the articles written by its researchers will be made freely available without charge to the whole international community. In doing this, the Institute is pursuing its commitment to publications in open access scientific peer-reviewed journals.
IN2P3 was already committed to the international movement for making scientific publications freely available to all. It is one of the key players in the European project, the "Sponsoring Consortium for Open Access Publishing in Particle Physics" (SCOAP3), launched by CERN in 2006, which includes European physicists, funding bodies and libraries. The aim is to create a new model for funding publications, where the funding comes from the research institutions to which the researchers belong, and not the readers, as previously. This should make it possible to circulate results openly, at no cost to readers.
The signing of the agreement today marks a new step in the process. The signatories are the IN2P3 and the Journal of High Energy Physics (JHEP), one of the leading journals in the field of high energies, published by the Institute of Physics, an international organization working to further understanding and applications of physics. Based on this agreement, any articles published in the JHEP having one of its authors affiliated to a French organization will, from now on, be financed by the IN2P3 and made freely available in open access to the whole of the international community.
This important progress in open access publishing meets the scientific quality recommendations of the SCOAP3 project, because quality of open access articles is as high as those of hard copy articles, since they go through the same channels of validation and selection by peer review.
Posted by
Peter Suber at 9/11/2007 09:34:00 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.
