In accordance with the CERN Open Access Policy and the General Conditions for CERN Experiments, CERN authors are required to publish all of their peer-reviewed primary research articles Open Access (by default under a Creative Commons attribution license, i.e. CC-BY-4.0).

In order to facilitate compliance with this rule, the CERN Scientific Information Service has established a number of enabling mechanisms to support authors in publishing Open Access:

SCOAP³ (Sponsoring Consortium for Open Access Publishing in Particle Physics) 

CERN authors should publish their physics papers in the journals covered by SCOAP³ (covering the majority of research in the discipline of high energy physics). 

Publisher Agreements

Open Access publishing for the majority of research articles outside of the SCOAP3 journals is supported through dedicated arrangements with publishers, which cover primary research articles with CERN corresponding authors and in many cases CERN experimental collaborations. Such articles are automatically detected during the submission process and are automatically published OA under the agreements.

Individual article support

For articles that are not covered by either of the above arrangements, CERN authors can still be eligible for central open access funding under certain conditions:

• The article is not already covered through an agreement of any of the co-author affiliated institutions, or via an EC grant.
• Authors must contact the Scientific Information Service in advance of submission to confirm the eligibility for central payment from the CERN Open Access fund.
• Articles submitted to journals with exceptionally high APCs (i.e. in excess of CHF 4000) will not be funded by CERN. For articles submitted to journals with an APC above the threshold, the authors have to identify another source of funding. 
• For special issues coordinated or authored by CERN resulting in high publishing costs for CERN, editors of such special issues should submit a specific justification and request for approval before organising such issues.  

Finding the most suitable journal for an article

Authors are recommended to use the interactive CERN OA Guide to find out if their preferred journal allows them to comply with the CERN Open Access policy. In the table below, journals are listed by discipline which can help authors to find suitable outlets. When considering the options, authors should be aware that all major funders, including the European Commission, have announced that they no longer evaluate grant applications based on the journal impact factor, publication venue or publisher. Publication outlets should be chosen solely on the basis of suitability for the specific topic.

The landscape of Open Access publishers has been developing fast in the past years, and many new publishers are now publishing full Open Access journals in various disciplines. When CERN authors want to submit a paper to one of those new, less-known publishers, they can use several resources to find relevant information:

• http://thinkchecksubmit.org/ helps to ask right questions when submitting a paper
• Directory of Open Access Journal (https://doaj.org) lists Open Access peer-reviewed journals, verified by the DOAJ team.
• CERN SIS is also there to provide guidance, please don’t hesitate to contact us if you have any question.

Please consult the Open access FAQ's for further questions or contact the CERN Scientific Information Service for guidance and support.

 

 

To find the most suitable Open Access journal, you can also browse the following lists by discipline or type of publication:

Outlet by scientific discipline	Other types of publications
Accelerators	Conference proceedings
Instrumentation	Open Access Books
Physics