Open access (OA) publishing is proving to be a very successful publishing model in the scholarly scientific field: today, more than 10,000 journals are accessible in OA, according to the Directory of Open Access Journals. Building on this positive experience, ebooks are also becoming available under this free-access scheme.
The economic model is largely inspired by the well-established practice in scientific article publishing, and several publishers have expanded their catalogues to include OA books. Under an appropriate licensing system, the authors retain copyright but the content can be freely shared and reused with appropriate author credit.
The ebooks system, in addition to expanding the diffusion of knowledge, overcomes the production and distribution costs of paper books that result in high prices for titles often acquired only by libraries. OA ebooks are also the ideal outlet for the publication of conference proceedings, maximising their visibility, and with great benefits for library budgets.
Five key works written or edited by CERN authors are already profiting from the impact that comes from their free dissemination.
Three of them are already accessible online:
• Melting Hadrons, Boiling Quarks – From Hagedorn Temperature to Ultra-Relativistic Heavy-Ion Collisions at CERN: With a Tribute to Rolf Hagedorn by Johann Rafelski (ed), published by Springer (link.springer.com/book/10.1007%2F978-3-319-17545-4).
• 60 Years of CERN Experiments and Discoveries by Herwig Schopper and Luigi Di Lella (eds), published by World Scientific (dx.doi.org/10.1142/9441#t=toc).
• The High Luminosity Large Hadron Collider: The New Machine for Illuminating the Mysteries of Universe by Lucio Rossi and Oliver Brüning (eds), published by World Scientific (dx.doi.org/10.1142/9581#t=toc).
Two further OA titles will appear in 2016:
• The Standard Theory of Particle Physics: 60 Years of CERN by Luciano Maiani and Luigi Rolandi (eds), published by World Scientific.
• echnology Meets Research: 60 Years of Technological Achievements at CERN, Illustrated with Selected Highlights by Chris Fabjan, Thomas Taylor and Horst Wenninger (eds), published by World Scientific.
Members of the organising committee of a conference, looking for an OA outlet for the proceedings, and authors who are planning to publish a book, are invited to contact the CERN Library, so that the staff there can help them to negotiate conditions with potential publishers.
