[Taxacom] FW: DEVELOPING WORLD TO RECEIVE ACCESS TO CRITICAL GLOBAL ENVIRONMENTAL RESEARCH: an alternative

[Donat Agosti]

Here is an alternative to the OARE initiative launched by UNEP and YALE. If
the particle physics community is able to get together, we ought be able to
do so as well. Our institutions have their own inhouse journals, some of
which being already open access and thus we have the seeds as well.

 

As Sandy Knapp put’s it so nicely, we systematists are a megascience as
well. We have most likely over 6,000 scientists working on charting the
world, we have magnificient institutions similar to the large colliderts (eg
herbaria and nat his museums) all increasingly becoming a seamless working
place.

 

Why not launch our own conference?

 

Donat

 

http://www.interactions.org/cms/?pid=1024673

PR16.06E

03.11.2006

Open Access publishing in physics gains momentum

Geneva, 3 November 2006. The first meeting of European particle physics
funding agencies took place today at CERN[1][1] to establish a consortium
for Open Access publishing in particle physics, SCOAP3[2][2]. This is the
first time an entire scientific field is exploring the conversion of its
reader-paid journals into an author-paid Open Access format.

Open Access is a policy that could revolutionize the academic publishing
world and have a great impact on research. By changing the traditional model
of financing publications through reader subscriptions, the publications
will be free to readers and financed by funding agencies via laboratories
and the authors. This new concept in publishing will broaden opportunities
for researchers and funding agencies in achieving greater benefit from
unrestricted distribution of the results of their publicly funded research. 

“DESY fully supports open access publishing in particle physics and we would
like to see it realized within a short time scale. It is of great importance
that we are actively and constructively involved in these ongoing
discussions aiming to establish a sponsoring consortium,” stated Rolf-Dieter
Heuer, Research Director at Germany’s DESY laboratory. His remarks were
echoed by Francois le Diberder, from the French national institute for
particle and nuclear physics (CNRS/IN2P3): “CNRS, and IN2P3, fully support
the SCOAP initiative and will proactively participate in its inception and
operation”. The delegate from Italy’s national institute for nuclear physics
(INFN) Graziano Fortuna, said, “INFN fully supports the move to an Open
Access system for high energy physics publications.” Expressions of support
came from other delegates, including those of German funding agencies,
notably the Max Planck Society, Greece, Portugal, the Netherlands, Norway,
Spain, Sweden and Switzerland. The European Committee for Future
Accelerators (ECFA) also offered support. Both national and international
library consortia were enthusiastic about the initiative.

“There is a wind of change blowing and with it the possibility to experiment
with new models – in this CERN is perceived as the pioneer of a new
publishing paradigm and the SCOAP initiative as a pilot project for future
developments in scientific publishing,” said Pēteris Zilgalvis of the
European Commission. 

Publishers also are aligning with the opportunities offered by Open Access:
journals published by American Institute of Physics, American Physical
Society, Elsevier and Springer have already started to offer authors the
possibility to make their articles freely available to readers. Shortly
before the meeting, the publishing consortium of the European Physical
Journal lowered the price tag for such an Open Access option and announced
an author-friendly approach to copyright. At the same time the publishers of
the Journal of High Energy Physics (JHEP) stated they are ready to embrace a
sponsorship policy in which they would allow unrestricted access to their
articles. On the cost of this policy JHEP states: “we have managed to prove
that the costs can be reduced whilst at the same time ensuring the highest
rigour in peer review“.

Today the first steps have been taken in developing an effective strategy to
provide funding to Open Access publishing in high energy physics. An interim
working party comprising physicists, librarians and legal experts from
across Europe has been formed with the mandate to lay the foundations for
SCOAP3 within the next few months.

Fred Friend, Honorary Director of Scholarly Communication, University
College London, stated, “Today, the lead has come from funding agencies. It
is important to have a united front to achieve the ultimate goals of Open
Access and change the High Energy Physics publishing landscape for ever”.


  _____  

[1][1] CERN, the European Organization for Nuclear Research, is the world's
leading laboratory for particle physics. It has its headquarters in Geneva.
At present, its Member States are Austria, Belgium, Bulgaria, the Czech
Republic, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Italy,
Netherlands, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Slovakia, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland
and the United Kingdom. India, Israel, Japan, the Russian Federation, the
United States of America, Turkey, the European Commission and UNESCO have
Observer status.

[1][2] SCOAP3, Sponsoring Consortium for Open Access Publishing in Particle
Physics.