10 years of SCOAP3: SCOAP3, Open Science global partnership, challenges and opportunities

SCOAP3 (Sponsoring consortium for Open Access Publishing in Particle Physics) is the world’s largest open access initiative, consisting of over 3,000 member institutions across 44 countries/regions and territories. In its continuous operation for a decade, SCOAP3 has supported open access publishing across 11 leading journals, covering over 90% of research published in high-energy physics. Since 2021, SCOAP3 has expanded its efforts to deliver open access for key monographs and textbooks to support research and teaching in high energy physics and related fields.

In 2024, we are celebrating the 10th anniversary since the start of the initiative. At this occasion, we will review how it has, over the 10 past years, maintained a sustainable approach for the publication of more than 60,000 articles and over 80 books, with cost control and fair repartition of the funding among SCOAP3 partners in more than 40 countries, regions and international organizations, resulting in a model benefitting to the entire scientific community. We also show-case the impact of the initiative for the HEP community, and their Scholarly Communication practices, taking into account the journals and the books covered by SCOAP3.

In addition, we outline the near future of the initiative with the preparation of the Phase 4 starting in 2025, which includes Open Science elements in the services provided by the publishers of the SCOAP3 journals. These service criteria include, among others, the improved adoption of persistent identifiers, software and dataset linking, enriched metadata and improved accessibility standards to support the needs of those with disabilities. The Phase 4 of SCOAP3 will secure continued open access publishing for research in high-energy physics across leading journals in the discipline, and include a novel mechanism to provide incentives to participating publishers to improve aspects of their service which will advance open science adoption for the discipline.

In summary, SCOAP3 is an essential part of a global movement to further the broader uptake of Open Science, and provides an unprecedented example of 10 years of successful Open science partnership and implementation.