berlin5 : SCOAP

Salvatore Mele (CERN) on SCOAP (the new CERN OA publishing model). HEP (high energy physics) is decades ahead in OA thinking

• has been circualting preprints for 40 years
• arXiv 1991
• first peer-reviewed electronic journals
• small community 20,000

and journals are only needed for non-communication reasons. The community

• need journals as interface to officialdom
• purchases subscriptions but actually reads arXiv
• journal format is anachronistic

The authors, not librarians, drive the process.
Hybrid model has negligible success – why should I pay for what I can read anyway
So, sponsoring model (institutions) or institutional membership (e.g. JHEP and JINST)
So SCOAP³. 5000 articles in community of 20000. tripartite – funders, publishers, authors. "A consortium sponsors HEP pubs and makes them OA by redirecting subscription money". The consortium pays for peer-review – articles are free to everyone.
Sponsoring and inst. membership on a world wide scale.
Most publishers are expected to enter negotiations if SCOAP is seen as stable. SCOAP open to all HEP journals in principle.
Will cost 10 M EUR / year (cost of experiment is 400 M EUR…) [PMR: not sure what experiment].
[…Lots of material on cost of publication omitted…]
GOAL: have SCOAP ready for first set of LHC results.
25% of funds have been pledged already.