CERN Confirms commitment to Open Access
At a meeting on the Wednesday before Easter, the Executive Committee endorsed a policy of open access to all the laboratory's results, as expressed in the document ‘Continuing CERN action on Open Access' (http://cds.cern.ch/record/828991/files/open-2005-006.pdf), released by its Scientific Information Policy Board (SIPB) earlier in the month. "This underlines CERN's commitment to sharing the excitement of fundamental research with as wide an audience as possible", said Guido Altarelli, current SIPB chairman.
Open Access to scientific knowledge is today the goal of an increasing component of the worldwide scientific community. It is a concept, made possible by new electronic tools, which would bring enormous benefits to all readers by giving them free access to research results.
CERN has implicitly supported such moves from its very beginning. Its Convention (http://cds.cern.ch/record/330625/files/cm-p00046871.pdf), adopted in 1953, requires openness, stipulating that "... the results of its experimental and theoretical work shall be published or otherwise made generally available". In recent years advances in technology, in particular the invention of the Web, have given a new dimension to this notion.
The first practical actions toward the realization of Open Access to knowledge in the sciences and in the humanities were formulated at a meeting held at CERN in May 2004. This meeting aimed to define the implementation of the recommendations of the Berlin Declaration formulated six months before (http://www.zim.mpg.de/openaccess-berlin/berlindeclaration.html). During this meeting, the Declaration was signed by CERN. So far the Declaration has been signed by 55 organizations throughout the world, which are now taking concrete measures for its implementation.
Changing the publishing model for scientific journals is one part of the Open Access movement, however, it is one where CERN is in a position to lead and influence the scientific community.
A subsequent meeting held in Southampton in March 2005 established how the Berlin Declaration should be put in place. Its resolution is fully in line with the CERN policy that was presented at the same meeting:
- Implement a policy to require their researchers to deposit a copy of all their published articles in an open access repository.
- Encourage their researchers to publish their research articles in open access journals where a suitable journal exists and provide the support to enable that to happen.
The ever-increasing cost of traditional scientific publishing methods is another incentive towards changing the publishing model. Owing to these increases, even the CERN Library is currently unable to offer complete coverage of its core subjects.
"Authors must continue to have the freedom to publish where they want," said Guido Altarelli, "and currently only rather few journals have adopted Open Access with acceptable business models." The position of CERN as a leading international research laboratory and its advocacy of Open Access could cause this situation to change quickly.
