Information about SCOAP³ and Physical Review journals

Since January 1, 2018, APS has participated in SCOAP³ (Sponsoring Consortium for Open Access Publishing in Particle Physics) and has now signed an agreement with CERN to continue to include three of its world-leading journals in the third three-year phase of SCOAP³, which commences January 1, 2020. APS is extending its participation in SCOAP³ as a continuance of its commitment to open access, as adopted by APS Council in 2009.

This arrangement means high-energy physics (HEP) articles accepted by Physical Review Letters (PRL), Physical Review C (PRC), and Physical Review D (PRD) will be published open access, under a CC-BY license, and funded by SCOAP³, with no article publication charges (APCs) for authors.

SCOAP³ provides a route for high-energy physics authors to eliminate the financial barriers of disseminating their research in the rapidly expanding open access landscape. The SCOAP³ consortium includes over 3,000 libraries and research institutes. In the conventional model, libraries and other subscribers pay publishers for access to journal articles. Under the SCOAP³ system, the consortium collects funds directly from subscriber institutions and then makes payments to publishers based on the number of articles published as open access papers. This allows high-energy physics papers to be published open access at no direct cost or additional burden to authors.

Which papers are covered by SCOAP³?

• HEP papers covered by SCOAP³ are all those posted on arXiv.org – with a primary category of hep-ex, hep-th, hep-ph, or hep-lat – prior to publication in PRL, PRC, or PRD. Please note that arXiv moderators have the right to review and change categorization if it is deemed not correct. arXiv.org is a fully independent service by Cornell University, and neither APS nor the SCOAP³ collaboration can challenge the decision of arXiv moderators regarding a possible reclassification of an article.
• HEP papers published in the three participating APS journals on or after January 1, 2018 have been published open access under this initiative, even if the manuscript was originally submitted prior to this date.
• Papers may qualify irrespective of the authors’ institutional affiliations or countries of origin.

Which license will be used for SCOAP³ papers?

Papers will be published under a Creative Commons CC-BY license. Authors will not be required to pay the open access Article Publication Charge (APC) fees for their articles as these will be covered centrally by SCOAP³. Authors will need to execute the appropriate right-to-publish agreement.

How are SCOAP³ papers identified after publication?

Papers published under the agreement will be marked as ‘Funded by SCOAP³’ in the license statement on the first page of the paper.

How are SCOAP³ papers treated during the peer-review process?

The peer-review process is independent of whether a paper qualifies for SCOAP³ and is solely based on the scientific merit of the work. Physical Review staff will check arXiv identifiers and verify that papers have an appropriate HEP primary category. Submitting directly from arXiv.org via our Submissions server or providing the arXiv id during the submission process are the preferred methods for conveying a paper’s arXiv id. Papers without an arXiv id which would otherwise likely qualify (based on the content of the paper) will be marked as a SCOAP³ candidate during the peer-review process. Authors will have the opportunity to either supply an arXiv id throughout the peer-review process (all the way through the production proof stage) or to convey their intention not to put the paper on arXiv.org. Candidate papers will be held from final publication until authors explicitly inform us of their choice. Further delays in publication may occur if an author has to redo their right-to-publish agreement because they have changed their mind late in the publication process.

International Year of Basic Sciences for Sustainable Development

SCOAP³ supports the goals of the International Year of Basic Sciences for Sustainable Development, July 1, 2022-June 30, 2023.