The Audacity of SCOAP3

The Association of Research Libraries today (April 8th, 2008) posted The Audacity of SCOAP3, an essay by Ivy Anderson, Director of Collections, California Digital Library. The essay describes the major issues and arguments behind SCOAP3 (Sponsoring Consortium for Open Access Publishing in Particle Physics), the new CERN scholar-led initiative to promote open access for the major journals in the field. SCOAP3 calls libraries and funding agencies into international partnership to reduce publishing fees, while still providing the necessary monetary support for the peer review and publishing process. The American Physical Society and the IEEE, two of the major society publishers in the field, are currently engaged in discussions with SCOAP3.