CERN joins COPE

CERN joins COPE

CERN, the European Organization for Nuclear Research, has joined COPE, the Compact for Open-Access Publishing Equity.

As a publicly and internationally funded research institution, CERN believes everyone should get access to its results without any financial barrier. The most important tool to implement this vision in the high-energy physics community, which CERN embodies, is the SCOAP3 initiative, through which CERN and partners in over twenty countries are working to convert to open access existing high-quality high-energy physics journals. While waiting for SCOAP3 to be operational CERN and leading publishers in the field (the American Physical Society, Elsevier, SISSA, and Springer) have reached agreements to make the scientific publications from the flagship Large Hadron Collider available open access and under a Creative Common license, as suggested by the publication policy of the CERN Physics Department.

These initiatives do not cover the entire spectrum of the literature produced at CERN, and CERN has a long history of taking further action to encourage a transition to open-access publishing. In particular, recognizing that high-quality scientific publishing has a cost, and scientific journals play a key role in the quality-assurance process, the CERN Scientific Information Service covers reasonable fees that some journals charge in order to make research articles open access. This instrument is only available for articles published in fully open access journals, and not for so called “hybrid” journals, which sell subscriptions and make part of their content available open access against a fee, as the CERN Library has already paid for the services provided by those journals, so these additional open access fees cannot be covered. The possibility for covering open access publishing fees is available  for all research articles spontaneously submitted by members of CERN personnel.

This vision is perfectly in line with the COPE principles, and CERN has therefore joined the increasing list of research institutes and universities committed to advance open access in this way.

CERN Director General Rolf Heuer commented: "CERN is committed to widespread access to, and reuse of, our scientific results. At the same time, we recognize the indispensable quality-assurance role that scientific journals play today. The SCOAP3 Open Access initiative is based on these pillars, which also support our partnership with leading publishers to publish open access, and under Creative Common licenses, the results of the LHC. We welcome every open access initiative that improves access, and fosters reuse, while recognizing the role of scientific publishing.  Our synergy with COPE reflects this shared vision."

In addition, CERN also fosters open access by contributing to the sponsorship of the open-access journal Physical Review Special Topics – Accelerators and Beams as well as underwriting part of the running costs of arXiv, and supporting Creative Commons.  CERN participates in building tools for open access such as INSPIRE, a large-scale disciplinary repository for high-energy physics and the related open source digital library software Invenio. CERN is also coordinating a consortium of libraries, publishers and funding agencies, SOAP, in a large-scale study to identify the demand for and provision of open access and its main drivers and barriers.

Simon Fraser University joins Open Access Compact

[Reprinted from the Simon Fraser University announcement]

SFU joins open access publishing group

Burnaby, B.C., Canada, October 21, 2010 — Today Simon Fraser University joins 12 other leading post-secondary institutions as a signatory to the Compact for Open Access Publishing Equity (COPE). Open access makes scholarly and other content freely available online to all users, without barriers, such as subscriptions or pay-per-view/use costs. Signatories to this Compact agree to support new business models for the publication of open access journals. Specifically, the Compact commits each signatory to developing ways of underwriting reasonable publication charges for articles written by its faculty and published in fee-based open-access journals and for which other institutions would not be expected to provide funds.

Since February 2010, the SFU Library has operated an Open Access Fund. The Fund meets COPE requirements by covering many author-side fees for SFU researchers who publish in open access journals that charge such fees. The third such fund in Canada, SFU’s Open Access Fund has covered 22 articles to date. The SFU fund is part of a set of SFU-based programs that support open access. The Library hosts the SFU institutional repository where the digital scholarly output of the university is collected and maintained. The Library partners with the SFU-based Canadian Centre for Studies in Publishing, along with Stanford University and the University of British Columbia to develop and maintain the Public Knowledge Project (PKP) suite of software – Open Journal Systems (OJS), Open Conference Systems (OCS), Open Harvester Systems (OHS) and soon Open Monograph Press (OMP). The Library also hosts over 250 journals using OJS with many having adopted an open access publishing model.

Dr Mario Pinto, Vice President for Research, articulates the philosophy underlying SFU’s commitment as follows: “SFU is a recognized leader in the use of innovative technologies and initiatives that enhance and simplify access to scholarly knowledge. We were one of the first Canadian universities to embrace open access publishing. By making the results of research freely available, we stand to gain the maximum benefit from publicly-funded research investment by facilitating the transfer of knowledge and stimulating creative thought.” Simon Fraser University consistently ranks among the top research universities in Canada in terms of sponsored research income, publication rates and impact factors. In 2010, SFU placed fourth in Canada and 66 out of 6000 higher education institutes from across the globe in the Webometrics Ranking of World Universities.

The original COPE members include Cornell University, Dartmouth College, Harvard University, Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), and the University of California at Berkeley. More recent signatories include Duke University and the University of Michigan. Simon Fraser University is the third Canadian member of COPE, along with the University of Ottawa and University of Calgary.

COPE Announces Individual and Institutional Supporters

We are pleased to announce our first slate of individual and institutional supporters of the Compact for Open-Access Publishing Equity, who have endorsed the Compact and encourage universities to become signatories. These supporters include heads of preeminent scholarly organizations, leaders of the open-access movement, and farsighted scholars, including over a dozen Nobel-prize-winning scientists. In addition, a range of institutions — including funding agencies, publishers and publisher associations, and other non-profits — have expressed their support for the Compact. A full list of the current supporters is provided below.

We urge other thought leaders from throughout the academic, funding, and policy worlds to lend their support to this important effort by adding their names and their organization's endorsement to the Compact. To add your support, contact COPE through the web site.

The Compact for Open-Access Publishing Equity states a commitment to provide equitable support for an alternative business model for scholarly journals, in which universities and funders pay directly for publisher services rather than for access to articles, enabling access to be freely available to anyone. Open-access journals have already proved their efficacy, but to provide a sustainable business model for such journals, universities need to do their part in committing to their success, as signified by the Compact.

Individual Supporters

Affiliations are presented for identification purposes only. (Nobelists are marked by a medal icon.)

• Mario Capecchi, Distinguished Professor of Human Genetics and Biology, University of Utah School of Medicine 
• Robert Curl, University Professor Emeritus, Rice University 
  
• Edmond H. Fischer, Professor Emeritus of Biochemistry, University of Washington 
  
• Alfred Gilman, Chief Scientific Officer, The Cancer Prevention and Research Institute of Texas 
• Paul Greengard, Vincent Astor Professor, Rockefeller University 
• Dudley Herschbach, Frank B. Baird, Jr. Professor of Science, Harvard University 
  
• Roald Hoffmann, Frank H. T. Rhodes Professor Emeritus of Humane Letters, Cornell University 
  
• Robert Horvitz, David H. Koch Professor of Biology, MIT 
  
• Steven Hyman, Provost, Harvard University
• Heather Joseph, Executive Director, SPARC
• Roger Kornberg, Mrs. George A. Winzer Professor in Medicine, Stanford University 
• Peter Lange, Provost, Duke University
• Kary Mullis, Chief Scientific Officer, Altermune, LLC 
• Stanley Prusiner, Professor of Neurology, University of California, San Francisco 
• Stuart Shieber, Welch Professor of Computer Science, Harvard University
• Peter Suber, Fellow, Berkman Center for Internet and Society, Harvard University
• Jack W. Szostak, Professor of Genetics, Harvard Medical School 
• John Wilbanks, Vice President of Science, Creative Commons
• John Willinsky, Khosla Family Professor, Stanford University
• Rolf Zinkernagel, Professor of Experimental Immunology, University of Zurich 
• ...add your support

Organizational Supporters

• BioMed Central
• Creative Commons
• Open Access Scholarly Publishers Association (OASPA)
• Scholarly Publishing and Academic Resources Coalition (SPARC)
• Wellcome Trust
• ...add your organization's support

Wellcome Trust Statement of Support for COPE

Wellcome Trust has issued the following statement of support for COPE.

In 2005, the Wellcome Trust became the first research funder in the world to introduce a policy that requires the published outputs of the research it funds to be made freely available.  As part of this policy, we provide our funded researchers with additional funding to cover the costs of open access publishing.

In line with the requirements set out in the Bethesda Statement on Open Access Publishing, our funding can be used to cover the publication costs in full open access journals — such as those published by the Public Library of Science and BioMed Central — as well as those levied by "hybrid" journals, which make individual articles available on an open access basis.

As such, the Trust welcomes the work being done through the Compact for Open Access Publishing Equity initiative to help develop a sustainable and stable source of funding for publishers who choose to provide an open access option.

We are grateful to Wellcome for their longstanding and deep support of open access, including COPE.

University of Calgary Signs Open Access Compact

[Reproduced from the University of Calgary announcement.]

Scholarly works available for free online

Calgary, Alberta, Canada, October 18, 2010 — The University of Calgary joins 11 other prestigious post-secondary institutions in making scholarly works more accessible by offering free online content as a signatory to the Compact for Open Access Publishing Equity (COPE).

Open access makes scholarly and other content freely available online to all users, without barriers, such as subscriptions or pay-per-view/use costs. Signatories to the compact commit to supporting new business models for the publication of open access journals.

The original COPE members include Cornell University, Dartmouth College, Harvard University, Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), and the University of California at Berkeley. More recent signers include the University of Ottawa. The University of Calgary is the second Canadian member of COPE.

Journals are the most well-known proponents of the open access movement and there are now more than 5,500 open access journals worldwide. These journals cover their costs in a variety of ways, such as levying fees on the author side of journal production.

The compact commits each signatory to developing ways of underwriting reasonable publication charges for articles written by its faculty and published in fee-based open-access journals and for which other institutions would not be expected to provide funds.

Since mid-2008, the U of C's Libraries and Cultural Resources has operated the Open Access Authors Fund. The fund meets COPE requirements by covering many author-side fees for U of C researchers who publish in open access journals that charge such fees. The first such fund in Canada and the sixth in the world, the Open Access Authors Fund has covered 135 articles to date.

The U of C fund is part of a suite of programs that support open access through the Centre for Scholarly Communication. The centre also includes: DSpace, an institutional repository that collects and makes available the digital scholarly output of the university; the national CFI-funded Synergies project; and the University of Calgary Press. The U of C press has several open access journals under its imprint and will be releasing its first open access monograph during Open Access Week 2010.