R: Revoked Open Access?

["Enrico M. Balli" <enrico@medialab.sissa.it>]

Dear Ian,

Thanks for the nice comments on JHEP.

The Journal of High Energy Physics was born back in 1997, as a
"Community Journal". It was probably a little bit too early to be
successful with such a "naive" business model, and the alliance
with IOP Publishing was then necessary to the survival of the
Journal.

Almost two years ago we launched a new hybrid Open Access
initiative called the Institutional Membership Fee
(http://jhep.sissa.it/jhep/docs/SISSA_IOP_OA_proposal.pdf)
together with IOPP. This initiative proved to be successful: some
20% of the papers published in JHEP are now Open Access, thanks
to the support of some of the major institutions active in
particle physics. This business model offers an Open Access
alternative at a very low cost, often comparable to the cost of a
subscription.

Since the launch of the OA initiative, JHEP increased its share
of HEP publishing from 15% to 25% (Robert Aymar, Scholarly
communication in high-energy physics: Past, present and future
innovations, CERN-OPEN-2008-015, to appear in European Review.
http://doc.cern.ch//archive/electronic/other/generic/public/cer-000700329.pdf),
a result that clearly shows the advantage of OA publishing.

JINST, a sibling Journal jointly published by Sissa and IOPP, has
an even higher percentage of Open Access papers, including the
recently published complete scientific documentation of the CERN
Large Hadron Collider (LHC) machine and detectors
(http://www.iop.org/EJ/journal/-page-Dextra.lhc/jinst). 
JINST has
been singled out by CERN for this publication thanks to the many
advantages that this model offer to the community: High Quality,
Open Access, no-author-fees and low cost.

Best regards,
Enrico

-----Messaggio originale-----
Da: owner-liblicense-l@lists.yale.edu
[mailto:owner-liblicense-l@lists.yale.edu] Per conto di Ian Russell
Inviato: gioved=EC 9 ottobre 2008 23.40
A: liblicense-l@lists.yale.edu
Oggetto: RE: Revoked Open Access?

Journal of High Energy Physics was published as a free to authors and free
to readers publication by SISSA (the International School for Advanced
Studies).  This became financially unsustainable and the journal was then
co-published with the Institute of Physics Publishing under a subscription
model.  I understand that there is now the option of paying an
'institutional membership fee' which entitles readers in that institution to
access all articles in the journal regardless of the status of the paper,
and authors in that institution to publish articles on author pays Open
Access terms. These articles are therefore made freely available to the
entire world. There is a commitment to guarantee Open Access to these
articles in future years.

Ian Russell, ALPSP