The SCOAP3 initiative to centrally fund open access (OA) to research articles in particle physics at no cost to authors worldwide has been extended for an additional three years, commencing in 2025.
Celebrating its 10th anniversary this year, SCOAP3 has funded almost 70,000 OA articles across 11 leading journals in the discipline, funded by the collective contributions of over 3,000 institutions from more than 45 countries. Since 2014, it has made high-energy physics research freely accessible worldwide at no costs and no administrative burden to authors, and has set a global example for sustainable, effective and equitable OA.
In its upcoming fourth phase (2025-2027), SCOAP3 will include the Open Science Incentives Mechanism, which will reward publishers based on their adoption of open science practices. These practices include using persistent identifiers, the availability of datasets and software, enriching metadata, and improving accessibility, which will benefit researchers worldwide. Publishers will further be incentivised to disclose efforts in sustainability, data privacy, financial transparency, and diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI), which will be made publicly available on the SCOAP3 website.
Having established OA as the disciplinary norm for a decade, through this new innovation SCOAP3 aims to situate research papers more readily as a core output of an interlinked open science ecosystem. Just as prior phases of the initiative have demonstrated the possibilities of achieving equitable global OA, through its collaborative approach between libraries, research agencies, and participating publishers, SCOAP3 aims to further advance open science adoption, and once again set an example for other disciplines to emulate.