(1 Dec 2022) The world’s largest disciplinary open access initiative, the Sponsoring Consortium for Open Access Publishing in Particle Physics (SCOAP³), has officially launched a new initiative to make books in particle physics and related domains fully open access, under the SCOAP³ for Books program.
Since the launch of SCOAP³ in 2014, the transition to open access for scientific articles in particle physics has progressed rapidly. Over 90% of the annually published scientific articles in High-Energy physics have been made free for both readers and authors worldwide. The SCOAP³ for Books program is the latest effort of the global collaboration to expand the content made openly available to include academic books in particle physics and neighboring disciplines (including accelerator physics, instrumentation, etc).
Funded through the generous support of hundreds of institutions from within the collaboration, SCOAP³ has secured partnerships with leading academic publishers (including Cambridge University Press, Oxford University Press, Springer Nature, Taylor & Francis, and World Scientific) to make over 100 textbooks and monographs fully open access as part of the SCOAP³ for Books pilot. This new collaboration includes a partnership with OAPEN, a leading open access books library and publication platform that supports SCOAP³ for Books by providing services in the areas of hosting, dissemination, digital preservation, and analytics.
According to Stefan Hohenegger, Assistant Professor at the Institute of Nuclear Physics of Lyon (IN2P3), “SCOAP³ for books provides the high-energy physics community with open access to an excellent collection of relevant titles in the field. Making these books freely available is a fantastic support for research and an immense help for teaching: it gives students everywhere simple and free access to modern literature that is indispensable for advanced courses and lectures.”
Readers worldwide can now access over 60 books through the OAPEN Library SCOAP³ Collection, where more titles from the pilot will be added in the coming months. Books are also openly available through the publisher websites.
Based on the positive experience of the pilot program, the SCOAP³ Governing Council, at its November 2022 meeting, has endorsed an ongoing books program to support the open access publishing of new titles (“born-OA”) relevant to the field.
About SCOAP³: SCOAP³ is a one-of-its-kind partnership of over three thousand libraries, key funding agencies and research centers in 45 countries and 3 intergovernmental organizations. Working with leading publishers, SCOAP³ has converted key journals and books in the field of High-Energy Physics to open access at no cost for authors.
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