The High Energy Physics community strongly encourages Open Access publishing. The following statement was approved by the ALICE, ATLAS, CMS, LHCb and TOTEM Collaboration Boards in February-March 2007:
We strongly encourage the usage of electronic publishing methods for our publications and support the principle of Open Access Publishing, which includes granting free access of our publications to all. Furthermore, we encourage all collaboration members to publish in easily accessible journals, following the Open Access Paradigm.
The ALICE Collaboration represents over 1’000 physicists, engineers and technicians from 104 institutions and 30 countries;
The ATLAS Collaboration represents about 1’800 physicists including about 400 students from 150 universities and laboratories spread over 35 countries;
The CMS Collaboration represents about 2’000 scientists and engineers including 400 students from 159 institutions spread over 35 countries;
The LHCb Collaboration represents about 600 physicists from 46 universities and other institutions spread over 14 countries;
The TOTEM Collaboration represents about 135 physicists from 20 universities and other institutions spread over 14 countries.
KEK strongly supports the spirit of the SCOAP3 (Sponsoring Consortium for Open Access Publishing) project for its comprehensive approach to Open Access, taking into considerations that the price of journals has been rising and stays at the very expensive standard, so that the universities and institutes face difficulty to secure the budget for subscriptions. KEK endorses the role of journals as the possible place of the publication for variety of researchers in many areas of the world, various generations of researchers and variety of scientific ideas. Based on this course, KEK has been striving to consolidate the publication system of the Japanese physical journals toward the full open access. It is crucial for KEK to make an alliance with CERN for paving the way of new paradigms for the distribution of the knowledge of physics, and for opening to the SCOAP3 initiative.
On 4th January 2008, the High Energy Physics Advisory Panel (HEPAP) advises the U.S. Department of Energy and the U.S. National Science Foundation on High Energy Physics (HEP) research. After discussing Open Access at a recent meeting the panel expressed its strong support for SCOAP3, contingent upon its sustainability.
SCOAP3 is concerned about sustainability, as it answers a call from the HEP community for Open Access that maintains the high standards of peer-review of its high-quality journals. SCOAP3
aims to achieve Open Access by re-directing subscription funds which
are already in use, today, to provide content to library users, rather
than requiring new sources of funding and is thus sustainable by
construction.
Read more
On 15th August 2007, ICFA, the International
Committee for Future Accelerators, a major forum for future directions
in High Energy Physics, encouraged all concerned parties from all world
regions to actively get involved in the SCOAP3 initiative to assure its
success. ICFA also invited its members to facilitate the implementation
of SCOAP3 by raising awareness on open-access publishing in their
communities.
Read the complete statement.
The Strategic Helmholtz Alliance 'Physics at the Terascale', is a structured German network comprising 17 universities, 2 Helmholtz institutes and 1 Max Planck institute. It comprises experimental physicists and theoretical physicists addressing the fundamental questions of: particle physics, distributed computing, novel detector development and accelerator science.
"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".
Read the complete statement, January 2008
