Unrestricted access to published scientific results is essential for wide dissemination and efficient usage of scientific knowledge.
The particle physics community has always been at the forefront of the open access movement. Today, the overwhelming majority of scientific results in high energy physics are freely available as eprints on institutional or subject repositories like arXiv.org, but often not in their final published form. Journals still play and will continue to play, via their peer-review system, a crucial role in the quality assurance of research results. However, access to the final journal versions gets more and more restricted, especially for scientists at small institutions, due to spiraling subscription costs which force libraries to cancel subscriptions even to important journals.
The SCOAP3 initiative proposes a new business model for scientific publishing, with the goal of extending open-access to the bulk of peer-reviewed particle physics literature. An international consortium of funding agencies, libraries and research institutions aims to convert prestigious peer-reviewed journals to open access in a way transparent to authors, at the same time being open for any new high-quality particle physics journal. Publication costs will be centrally borne by the consortium and will be shared according to the respective number of journal articles of its member countries.
The Management Board of the Helmholtz Alliance 'Physics at the Terascale' fully supports the goal of SCOAP3 of free and unrestricted electronic access to peer-reviewed journal literature in particle physics. We are convinced that the proposed fair-share business model will promote a healthy and dynamic market and will benefit scientists, authors, funding agencies and publishers alike. We therefore invite all partners in the Helmholtz Alliance to actively support the SCOAP3 initiative, facilitate the large-scale transition to open-access in particle physics by raising awareness on open-access publishing in their communities and encourage their authors to publish in open-access journals.
Posted by
Peter Suber at 1/22/2008 04:26:00 PM.
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.
