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What is open access publishing?
Open access publishing and publications have received a lot of press lately,
from online debates at the Nature website to articles in the New York
Times. What exactly is an open access publication? There are many definitions,
but in a nutshell an open access publication is a publication that provides immediately
free online access to all users worldwide.
This may sound like a tall order, and yet there are to date over 1000 journal
publications alone that fit this definition. The need for this type of access
has been driven by the out-of-control costs for scholarly publications. Statistics
kept by the Association for Research Libraries show that since 1986 journal prices
have increased by 260% while inflation has increased 68%. At research institutions
around the world, scholarly work is submitted to commercial publishers only to
be bought back by libraries at those same institutions at immense costs. The
current system of scholarly publishing is not sustainable. Today the LANL Research
Library has a world-class journal collection in science and technology which
is under siege and will not last without changes in scholarly publishing.
So, why should you consider publishing in an open access publication?
- Increased dissemination
- Articles can be cited sooner
- Articles potentially cited more frequently
- Institutional costs for scholarly publishing are decreased
SCOAP3: Sponsoring Consortium for Open Access Publishing in Particle Physics
LANL Research Library joins Open Access consortium for particle physics publishing—SCOAP3 
The LANL Research Library has joined several libraries in the US and internationally in expressing support for the Sponsoring Consortium for Open Access Publishing in Particle Physics (SCOAP3). SCOAP3 aims to make articles in selected high energy physics (HEP) journals free to read for everyone. It is a proposed mechanism for a field of science (in this case particle physics) to pay for its own publishing costs, rather than make the readers of its journals pay via subscriptions or authors pay via author fees.
In this model, HEP funding agencies and libraries, which today purchase journal subscriptions to implicitly support the peer-review service, federate to explicitly cover the base costs of publishing and peer-review, and the associated publishers make the electronic versions of their HEP journals free to read widely across the globe.
In the proposed SCOAP3 model, everyone involved in producing the literature of particle physics (universities, labs, and funding agencies) pays into the consortium which then pays publishers and all articles in the field become available via Open Access.
The high energy physics (HEP) community essentially pioneered open access (OA), through repositories such as the xxx.lanl.gov physics archive (which started originally at LANL, and is now the arXiv.org preprint server), the CERN preprint document server, SLAC Spires, etc. It is this same HEP community that is pioneering SCOAP3. The LANL Research Library is supporting SCOAP3 as a member of the HEP community and a proponent of open access principles.
The Open Access (OA) tenets of granting unrestricted access to the results of publicly-funded research are in contrast with current models of scientific publishing, where access is restricted to journal customers. At the same time, subscription costs increase and add considerable strain on libraries, forced to cancel an increasing number of journals subscriptions. This situation is particularly acute in fields like high energy physics (HEP), where pre-prints describing scientific results are timely available online. There is a growing concern within the academy that the future of high-quality journals, and the peer-review system they administer, is at risk. SCOAP3 is developed to address this situation for HEP and, as an experiment, Science at large. SCOAP3 proposes, for the first time, to link quality and price thereby stimulating competition and enabling considerable medium- and long-term savings.
SCOAP3 will initially seek to work with 5 core HEP journals:
- Physical Review D (APS)
- Physics Letters B (Elsevier)
- Nuclear Physics B (Elsevier)
- Journal of High Energy Physics (SISSA/IOP)
- European Physical Journal C (Springer)
For more information please see the Report of the SCOAP3 Working Party or the SCOAP3 FAQ for US Libraries.
Please send comments or questions to scoap3 AT lanl.gov.
More information
Directories
Directory of Open Access Journals
Information on Open Access and OA Publishers
Open Access Overview
BioMedCentral
Myths Regarding
Open Access Publishing
Open
Access - Unlocking the Value of Scientific Research (PDF)
Public Library of Science (PLoS)
SPARC
Statements of Principle
Berlin
Declarations
Bethesda Statement
Budapest Open Access Initiative
Focus on Access to Institutional Resources
(FAIR)
Wellcome Trust
Conferences and Workshops
Open Access
Upcoming Conferences
Forums
American Scientist Open Access Forum
Nature Forum on Open Access
Open Access Now Forum
SPARC Open Access Forum
Governmental Action
Enhanced Public Access to NIH Research Information (9/3/04)
House of Commons Science & Technology Committee Inquiry into Scientific Publications
Research Councils UK Position Statement on Access to Research Outputs (PDF)
Research Councils UK Position Summary (PDF)
Newsletters
SPARC Open Access Newsletter
(SOAN)
Open Access Publications - selected titles
Algebraic and Geometric
Topology
BioMedCentral - over
90 journals
Geometry & Topology
Journal of Machine Learning Research
New Journal of Physics
Public
Library of Science - PLoS Biology
Public Library of Science - PLoS
Medicine
UC eScholarship Repository
Papers
Open Access Bibliography: Liberating Scholarly Literature with E-Prints and Open Access Journals
Rethinking
scholarly communication (9/04)
Scholarly Communication Recommendations
Criteria to consider when choosing a journal in which to publish
For mathematicians - scholarly communication recommendations from math community
Studies
Correlation between
citation impact and usage impact
Costs and
business models in scientific research publishing (PDF)
The effect of open access and downloads ('hits') on citation impact: a bibliography of studies
The
Impact of Open Access Journals - A Citation Study From Thomson ISI (PDF)
Monograph
and Serial Costs in ARL Libraries, 1986-2003 (.xls)
Open
Access Journals in the ISI Citation Databases: Analysis of Impact Factors and
Citation Patterns (10/04)(PDF)
Contact Carol Hoover (hoover@lanl.gov) for further information.
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