IEEE Expresses Interest in Collaborating with International Consortium to Develop Open Access Publishing Model for High-Energy Physics Literature

IEEE Expresses Interest in Collaborating with International Consortium to Develop Open Access Publishing Model for High-Energy Physics Literature 

 

PISCATAWAY, N.J. - (Business Wire) The IEEE announced that it will participate in the SCOAP³ initiative, a global effort to develop an open access publishing model that will make peer-reviewed research articles in the high energy physics field available to online users at no cost. The IEEE is the world’s leading professional association for the advancement of technology.

The IEEE agreed that relevant articles from one of its journals, the IEEE Transactions on Nuclear Science, may be used to develop the new publishing model proposed by SCOAP³ (the Sponsoring Consortium for Open Access Publishing in Particle Physics). A letter signed by the IEEE expressed interest in the initiative, provided it will result in “sustainable” funding and business arrangements to support open access publishing.

“IEEE members are leaders in the development of technologies that are changing the world for the better, including the ways that we disseminate and use research,” said John Baillieul, vice president, IEEE Publication Services and Products. “In November, we adopted principles to provide a framework for us to explore new publishing models. SCOAP³ also endorses principles such as the value of peer review to validate scientific research, and the need for self-sustaining business models. The IEEE is keenly interested in exploring approaches that benefit the creators and consumers of technical literature.”

SCOAP³, which emerged largely through the support of European libraries, government agencies and Geneva-based CERN – the European Organization for Nuclear Research, is gathering support in the United States: recently, the University of California and several National Laboratories pledged funds to the consortium. The goal of the consortium is to convert subscription payments for high-energy physics journals to funding for peer-reviewed literature that will be distributed online, free to users.

SCOAP³ plans to provide financial support to publishers providing peer review and publication of complete journals dedicated to the high energy physics field, as well as select articles in what the consortium calls “broadband” journals. The IEEE Transactions on Nuclear Science, which serves a wide range of engineering disciplines, would be considered such a “broadband” journal. Under the SCOAP³ plan, paid subscribers to a broadband journal would receive a price reduction to account for the subset of the journal’s articles that are supported by SCOAP³ funding.

A not-for-profit organization, the IEEE’s decision to work with SCOAP³ followed its Board of Directors’ decision in November to adopt the IEEE’s Principles of Scholarly Publishing, in order to provide a framework to evaluate new publishing models.

“The IEEE will be examining the operation of the SCOAP³ model in the coming months, and we expect that our experience will inform future discussions on open access and other policy discussions, as guided by IEEE’s publishing principles,” Baillieul said. “The IEEE is interested in experiments, to test approaches to open access publishing that will be consistent with these principles.”

A summary of the IEEE’s Principles of Scholarly Publishing includes:

• Society benefits from the ability of scholarly publishers to develop, sustain and archive technical publications;
• Scholarly publishing environments should be intellectually free;
• Research results are enhanced by peer review to validate technical worthiness and scientific integrity;
• Scholarly publishing requires financial support from self-sustaining business models, and no single business model can fit the needs of various scholarly communities;
• All technology professionals, scientists and authors should have an equal opportunity to publish, regardless of their financial resources;
• Government’s role should be to fund research and ensure that results are vetted and disseminated by organizations with the experience, infrastructure and independence to provide the public with affordable and reliable access;
• In all cases, government should observe copyright and intellectual property rights of authors and publishers, including those instances where government mandates public access to government-sponsored research;
• Not-for-profit societies have a unique obligation to conduct all their activities, including publishing, not for the benefit of any individual or group of individuals, but directly or indirectly for the benefit of the global public.

The full text of the IEEE Principles of Scholarly Publishing and additional background information is available online at http://www.ieee.org/go/publishingprinciples.

IEEE Expresses Interest in Collaborating with International Consortium to Develop Open Access Publishing Model for High-Energy Physics Literature