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SciPost Expansion and Sustainability Drive 2018

Since our original call for openness in scientific publishing, things have been developing extremely well with SciPost. One quick glance at our publishing activities (our list of publications now numbers more than 100, including some highly-cited ones) is hopefully enough to convince you that we are well on our way to implementing a healthier infrastructure for scientific publishing.

Separately, in a sure sign that The Times They Are A Changin', big players are moving towards implementing Open Access very similarly to our vision (including the European Commission with its recent Call for Tenders, though you should read recent blog posts here and here for how this relates to SciPost).

We are very thankful for the immense support we have received from the scientific community during our initial phase. In view of this success, the time is now ripe for us to be bold, and unleash the next steps in our implementation plans. Read on to see how you can concretely help us bring forth a new age in publishing.

Update [2018-11-13]: see our broader expansion plans at our Plan SciPost page.

Going for Genuine Open Access

At SciPost, our ambitions for Open Access publishing are uncompromised, as can be seen from our guiding principles or our short intro video. In particular, we implement the Genuine Open Access principles (which include an explicit non profit requirement), are resolutely quality-oriented and international in outlook.

The two pillars of our expansion and sustainability drive

Our immediate expansion plan is very simply summarized in the following two pillars:

The first aims to ensure we can process the increasing editorial workflow. The second aims to ensure that we can expand the support team needed to run the infrastructure underlying all our operations (at the moment this still relies on a large amount of pro bono work from the core team).

Our objectives:

By the end of 2018, we wish to have achieved:

  • Expansion: to have a minimum of 200 Fellows in the Editorial College (Physics), with a minimum of 8 in each specialization;

  • Sustainability: to achieve €200 000 yearly income from Sponsors or other benefactors.

Our estimates are that we can fully process around 500 publications per year with this upscaling of our cost-slashing infrastructure.

How you can help

Are you sympathetic towards what we are aiming to achieve? You can help us accelerate our growth with these easy steps:

  • Is your field insufficiently represented in our current Editorial College?
    We are looking for world-class researchers to become Fellows. Send us your nominations at admin@scipost.org.
    Are you a professorial-level researcher working as editor for non-Genuine OA-compliant publishers? Looking to invest your expertise in a more community-friendly alternative? Get in touch.
    Please note that in view of our development plans, we also welcome nominations in fields beyond Physics.

  • Is your institution or funding agency not listed on our Sponsors page?
    Encourage them (through a librarian, Open Access officer, director, ...) to join by personally emailing them directly using this email template. Experience shows that such personal testimonies and statements of support from active scientists constitute the most persuasive means to convince institutions to support us.
    Funders which have been acknowledged in SciPost publications are listed at this link; clicking on a funder will show how many publications they are related to, which have been produced at no direct cost to them by our cost-slashing operations. Seeing this might also help convincing them to become Sponsors.

  • Are people in your surroundings and social network not yet sufficiently aware of SciPost?
    You can point them to our intro video and mention this drive on social media using the #SciPostDrive2018 and #SciPost hashtags.

  • Do you or people you know have the means to make a difference?
    All donations will be used to support running, maintaining and developing our infrastructure.

We will keep you continuously updated on the results from this Expansion and Sustainability Drive 2018 on our website and via our News page.

Many thanks in advance for your help.

On behalf of the SciPost foundation,

Prof. dr Jean-Sébastien Caux

Published 22 May 2018