• A transparent view of the costs of peer-review, editing, and article dissemination.
• An opportunity to contain the costs of HEP publishing.
• A more complete electronic information environment to support the needs of HEP research and beyond.
• A closer relationship with the worldwide research community to effect positive change in scholarly publishing.
• A demonstration of how international cooperation can support the advancement of sustainable Open Access to research.
• Concrete data on the viability of a unique Open Access publishing model that can inform the evolution of future potential models.
• The opportunity to automatically populate digital repositories with Open Access peer-reviewed material, or create local archives of all SCOAP³ material.

(SPARC / SCOAP 3)

The SCOAP³ model relies on the group negotiating power of an international consortium of libraries, as SCOAP³ aims to convert to Open Access the vast majority of the literature of the field.  This model creates for libraries the opportunity to:

• Achieve Open Access in a specific discipline without incurring additional expenses,
• Experiment with a new model that may have relevance for Science at large,
• Contain costs and achieve more value than is possible with the prevailing subscription model.

The HEP discipline is uniquely positioned for a large-scale experiment of this type, due its strong tradition of international collaboration and leadership of Open Access through arXiv.

SCOAP³ offers a valuable opportunity for the library community to test and explore the viability of a new model for open-access publishing.

(SCOAP3 FAQ)

SCOAP3 is supported by close to 3,000 libraries, research institutes and funding agencies from 41 participating countries, as well as three Inter-Governmental Organisations.

Operated at CERN under the supervision of a global Governing Council and the guidance of an Executive Committee, the SCOAP3 partnership continues to grow, with 550 libraries in six countries having joined in the last six months, redirecting their subscription savings in support of Open Access.

-SCOAP3