Major Milestone for SCOAP3: Invitation to Tender sent to Publishing Partners

“SCOAP3 is pleased to announce that it has issued its Invitation to Tender to the leading publishers of high-quality peer-reviewed journals carrying content in the field of High-Energy Physics, who had previously agreed to the key SCOAP3 principles in a qualifying market survey  This process is the culmination of one year of work, during which an international team of experts, with considered input from the publishing industry and the support of CERN, has transformed the SCOAP3 idea into a set of concrete specifications and a clear agreement framework. A detailed description of the SCOAP3 open access model is now publicly available. Publishers, who convened at CERN today to further discuss the tendering process, are now expected to submit their bids by mid June. SCOAP3 will then review the bids and identify the publishing partners and selected journals to which a contract for Peer Review, Open Access and other publishing services could be awarded. This competitive process will take into account the price per article and a set of defined quality criteria.  SCOAP3 aims to award contracts by end of the third quarter of 2012, putting into place a detailed operational and organizational infrastructure throughout 2013 for services expected to commence in January 2014.  To meet this schedule, SCOAP3 invites libraries, library consortia and funding agencies that have already pledged support, as well as those with whom partnerships are currently being forged, to engage with the process that is scheduled to unfold over the next several months as SCOAP3 builds its governance structure and concludes the agreements among all participants that are essential to begin this groundbreaking Open Access initiative."