Sponsoring Consortium for Open Access Publishing in Particle Physics

The Sponsoring Consortium for Open Access Publishing in Particle Physics (or SCOAP³) is an international collaboration in the high-energy physics community to convert traditional closed access physics journals to open access, freely available for everyone to read and reuse, shifting away the burden of the publishing cost from readers (traditional model) and authors (in the case of hybrid open access journals). Under the terms of the agreement, authors retain copyrights and the articles published under SCOAP³ will be in perpetuity under a CC-BY license.

Participating countries in the agreement sponsor SCOAP³ journals through the consortium, and contribute according to their scientific output. More productive countries pay more, while lower-output countries pay less.

Participating journals

In 2012, SCOAP³ reached agreements with 12 subscription journals to make their articles openly accessible. This agreement would cover 90% of all published particle physics articles from 2014 onwards. Of the original 12 journals, two journals pulled out of the agreement: Physical Review C and Physical Review D.