Europhysics Letters announced that it will “offer open access free of charge to all authors submitting experimental and theoretical letters in [the subjects of] ‘Physics of Elementary Particles and Fields’ and ‘Nuclear Physics'[,] two research areas focussing on the High-Energy Physics community”.
EPL is published under the scientific policy and control of the European Physical Society by EDP Sciences, IOP Publishing and the Italian Physical Society (SIF) for a partnership of 17 European physical societies.
With this offer, EPL joins Springer’s European Physical Journal C, which offers Open Access free of charges for all articles in experimental High-Energy Physics, and Elsevier’s Physics Letters B and Nuclear Physics B, which will publish Open Access without any author fees the first articles describing the physics results of the LHC.
Some other Open Access options in HEP are those of SISSA/IOPP, where libraries of institutions active in HEP can have a yearly institutional membership and provide Open Access to all articles produced by their scientists; APS, where authors can pay fees to make their articles Open Access through the free to read scheme; and full Open Access journals such as the New Journal of Physics and PhysMath Central Physics A, supported by author fees.
Those steps signify the engagement of publishers towards Open Access in HEP, which is the ultimate scope of the SCOAP3 initiative. SCOAP3 target is universal and sustainable Open Access for all articles in the discipline without any direct financial burden for scientists nor additional costs for libraries.