Lift off for SCOAP3

“Important OA news from CERN: ‘SCOAP3 is pleased to announce that its tendering process is now complete. Acting for the benefit of SCOAP3, CERN conducted the tendering process and, on the basis of the bids submitted by publishers, has identified 12 journals from 7 publishers for participation in SCOAP3....Over 6’600 articles eligible for inclusion in SCOAP3 were published in these journals in 2011, comprising the vast majority of the high-quality peer-reviewed literature in the field of High Energy Physics. Articles funded by SCOAP3 will be available Open Access in perpetuity, under a CC-BY license, while publishers will reduce their subscription fees accordingly....’ Comment: SCOAP3 (Sponsoring Consortium for Open Access Publishing in Particle Physics) has been building up to this day for six years. It went through planning, negotiation with stakeholder groups (labs, libraries, publishers, and funders), and a worldwide effort to persuade real institutions to commit real money. Now it's off the drawing boards, built, and flying. Kudos to all involved, especially SCOAP3 entrepreneur-in-chief, Salvatore Mele.  In 2010 I called SCOAP3 ‘still the only systematic attempt to convert all the journals in a field to OA at the same time.  It's the only field-wide attempt to show that the transition to gold OA can be a peaceful revolution based on negotiation, consent, and self-interest’ .”