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STFC welcomes a new partnership agreement, announced yesterday, that ensures all articles authored by CERN researchers that are published in the American Physical Society (APS) journal collection in the next two years, will be freely available for anyone to read 

Physics results from CERN will benefit from this Open Access partnership; in theoretical and experimental physics, at the Large Hadron Collider accelerator and many other experimental programs.

“CERN is a long-time supporter of APS journals, and is committed to Open Access. This collaboration is a very important step towards global Open Access for a global discipline”, said CERN Director General Rolf Heuer.

Although APS is not currently participating in the global Open Access initiative in physics coordinated by CERN, this agreement demonstrates a commitment from both organisations to Open Access publishing.

Professor Grahame Blair, Executive Director of Programmes at STFC said“As STFC and the other UK research councils work to apply Open Access across all the research we support, it is particularly pleasing to see this new initiative coming from CERN, one of our major international research partners.”

STFC coordinates and manages the UK’s involvement and subscription with CERN.

More information:

Marion O’Sullivan 
STFC Press Office
Tel: 01235 445627
Mob: 07824 888990

Notes for editors:

1. Articles in APS' Physical Review Letters, Physical Review D, and Physical Review C in 2015 and 2016 will be covered by the agreement. Copyright will remain with the authors and permissive Creative Commons CC-BY licenses will allow re-use of the information (e.g. in books, review articles, conference proceedings and teaching material) as well as text- and data-mining applications.
    
2. The American Physical Society is a non-profit membership organization working to advance and diffuse the knowledge of physics through its outstanding research journals, scientific meetings, and education, outreach, advocacy and international activities. APS represents 50,000 members, including physicists in academia, national laboratories and industry in the United States and throughout the world. Society offices are located in College Park, MD (Headquarters), Ridge, NY, and Washington, DC.
    
3. CERN, the European Organization for Nuclear Research, operates the world’s leading laboratory for particle physics. Its business is fundamental physics, finding out what the Universe is made of and how it works. Founded in 1954, CERN has become a prime example of international collaboration, with 21 Member States as of January 2014. Additional nations from around the globe also contribute to and participate in the research programs. CERN operates the global SCOAP3 partnership, a consortium of over 2000 libraries, research organizations and funding agencies in over 36 countries, which has converted to Open Access 10 journals in High-Energy Physics. The CERN Laboratory sits astride the Franco–Swiss border near Geneva. Its flagship research facility, the Large Hadron Collider, is housed in a 27-kilometre tunnel under the plain between Lake Geneva and the Jura mountains.
    
4. STFC and CERN: UK membership of CERN gives our physicists and engineers access to the experiments and allows UK industry to bid for contracts, UK nationals to compete for jobs and research positions at CERN, and UK schools and teachers to visit. UK scientists hold many key roles at CERN. Firms in the UK win contracts worth millions of pounds each year from CERN and the impact of winning contracts is often even greater as it enables companies to win business elsewhere