Open Access to Publications
What to do as CERN author.
Publishing a thesis, book, conference proceeding, or CERN report
Which mechanisms do we support?
I need a quick answer.
Paper publishing workflow
To whom does this guide apply?
This guide applies to publications authored by CERN authors or on behalf of a collaboration.
A CERN author as per Operational Circular 6 is any author of a document who, at the time the work described was carried out, was either a Staff member, Graduate or Fellow (not on special leave) or an Associated member of the personnel allowed by their Division Leader to use CERN as their affiliation on the document. Find out more in our author guidelines.
Not sure if you qualify? Contact the Library Desk.
This guide covers four areas. Jump to the one most relevant to you:
Authoring support
Writing tools and copy-editing services that support your writing.
Submit your preprint
Submitting your preprint and getting it into the CERN record
Make your data available
When publishing your research, don’t forget to also publish and cite your data.
Check & choose your journal
Verifying your journal legitimacy, open access options, and correct licensing
Authoring support
There are several offers to support you in your writing process:
Overleaf
Overleaf is an online LaTeX and Rich Text collaborative editor, reviewing and publishing tool. With your CERN account you have access to premium functions such as an unlimited number of collaborators or real-time track changes and CERN-specific templates.
Scientific writing course
The learning hub offers an interactive workshop to equip graduate scientists/engineers at CERN with the skills they need to write winning research proposals and excellent research reports.
Submit your preprint
Get approval for your paper
Before submitting your paper to any outlet, consult with your supervisor and follow any internal review and approval processes that may be in place for your department/collaboration.
Internal publication policies
First of all, familiarise yourself with the publication policies of your department/experiment, as in some groups, documents and papers are submitted by their respective secretariat:
The EP Publishing Policy specifically states that all experimental physics publications that describe work carried out at least in part by any CERN author or using any CERN experimental facility must submit their papers for approval to the Director of Research and Computing or EP Department Head prior to journal submission. This process is facilitated by obtaining an EP preprint number through the CERN Document Server (CDS), which can be obtained by following this submission procedure. Please note that some experiments (eg. ATLAS, CMS, LHCb) have this approval integrated in their dedicated submission.
- ALICE
- ATLAS
- CMS
- LHCb
- Theoretical Physics Department
- ATS Sector (Beams Department, Technology Department, Accelerator Systems Department, Engineering Department)
If your document, report, preprint or article is not treated by the official route, you should submit it yourself. There are two possibilities to submit your paper to the CERN Document Server (CDS):
ORCID
All CERN users and staff members that are involved in scholarly communication are encouraged to get an ORCiD. ORCiDs are not issued by CERN, but it is very easy and quick to register your own ORCID today for free. You just have to register your unique iD and you are ready to go!
Learn More
After registering you can manage all your information on your personal record page. You can add as many details as you want and set the level of privacy you desire for the information you enter (public, limited, or private). By default, the status is “private”, however, in order to make the best use of ORCiD, we recommend you ensure that at least the basic information is made visible on your profile.
You can use your ORCiD credentials to create an author profile on INSPIRE, where you can export your publications from INSPIRE to ORCiD (for more information, please follow the INSPIRE blog).
Submitting via arXiv
If, for some reason, the above procedures don’t apply to you, you can submit your paper directly to arXiv. Please follow the arXiv submission guidelines.
All CERN-related papers submitted to arXiv are also available in CDS, and, if relevant to high-energy physics, in INSPIRE. Once you submit your paper to arXiv, it will appear within one day in INSPIRE and within two days in CDS via automated feeds.
If you submit to CDS before you submit to arXiv, please make sure you add the CERN report number when submitting to arXiv to avoid any duplications in CDS.
Submitting directly to CDS
Please note that the IT Department and Scientific Information Service are currently in the process of migrating content from the “old CDS” to the CERN Repository. Detailed instructions on metadata standards, consultation requirements, and upload procedures for the CERN repository are therefore currently being developed. In the meantime, please contact the Open Science Office before uploading, so we can advise on correct metadata assignment and any departmental consultation needed.
If the above submission workflow doesn’t apply to you and your paper does not follow the arXiv route you should submit directly to CDS. However, please note that it might change dynamically whether you need to upload to the “old CDS” or the CERN Repository. These are the general guidelines applicable to the “old CDS” which remain valid for the time being.
Choose the document type/collection. You find the correct submission form on this list. Some notes:
- Every document in CDS is assigned to a department’s collection.
- Summer student project notes can be submitted via this form.
- In case you do not know which submission form to use, or don’t have a CERN account anymore, please contact the library desk.
Check the format and size of your document: https://cds.cern.ch/help/submit-guide
Go through the submission form and attach your file.
Once you have submitted, you will receive an email notification, and will be able to see the created record in CDS and its assigned CERN report number. Only you are authorised to see the record until it is approved.
As soon as the document has been approved, you will be notified via email, and the record will become publicly visible in CDS.
Make your data available
You find guidance on how to publish your data on the dedicated page:
Check your journal
Depending on your area, different publishing venues are suitable for your article. Discuss with your supervisor which journal suits you best. If you need guidance, you might consult this page.
Once you have a journal in mind, there are three things to verify before submission: the journal’s legitimacy, your open-access options, and the correct licence.
Step 1: What are your open-access options?
CERN requires all peer-reviewed primary research articles by CERN Authors to be published with open access. The costs are covered centrally through several mechanisms.
Note on conference proceedings
The Open Access Policy does not cover contributions to conference proceedings, owing to the vast variety of conferences and publication venues. No central funds are made available for covering open access to conference proceedings. Contributions by CERN Authors should be submitted to the CDS or arXiv (see above).
Conference organisers who would like to publish entire volumes of conference proceedings open access are invited to contact us. We can advise on existing cost-effective options through established publishers.
Use the CERN Author Guide to check what applies to your chosen journal:
The guide will show you whether your journal is covered by:
- SCOAP³ : covers most HEP journals at no cost to authors. List of SCOAP3 journals
- Publisher agreements (Read & Publish) : covers many journals outside SCOAP³ for CERN corresponding authors. List of open-access agreements.
- Individual article support : for journals not covered by the above, CERN may fund the Article Processing Charge (conditions apply; contact the Open Science Office before submission). Note: Articles in journals with APCs exceeding CHF 4,000 are not eligible for central funding. More information about the process.
Important: If your article would be published in a high-profile journal (Nature, Nature Physics, Science Advances, etc.) and is likely to receive significant public attention, it must be reviewed and approved by the Director of Research and Computing prior to journal submission.
Step 2: Is your journal trustworthy?
If you or your supervisor have not published in a particular journal before, or if the journal is outside your field’s established venues, it is worth running through a basic legitimacy check. Predatory or dubious journals can damage your reputation and waste your work.
Use the Think, Check, Submit checklist:
A note for the HEP community: In core HEP, the major journals (those covered by SCOAP³ and the established field journals) are well known. Use this checklist when you consider journals neither you or your supervisor has published before. For instance, interdisciplinary venues, newly launched journals, or journals from publishers you haven’t worked with before.
Step 3: Choose the correct licence
The CERN Open Access Policy requires publication under CC-BY-4.0 (Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International). The licence means that everyone can freely use, adapt and remix your work, but always has to give proper credit to the creator of the work.
About Creative Commons licences
Creative Commons licenses have been designed to easily share creative work online. There are six licence types, all starting with CC-BY, which stands for “Creative Commons Attribution”. This is the minimum requirement if you want to reuse a work licensed with one of this licence: You need to give proper attribution to the creator of the work.
Five of the licence types also have further requirements, designated by two letters added to its name. These are SA for “Share alike”, ND for “No Derivatives”, and NC for “Non Commercial”. So, if a work is licensed under “CC-BY-NC-ND”, this means that it must be attributed to the creator (BY), cannot be used for commercial purposes (NC) and cannot be adapted nor derived (ND).
The number at the end of the licence’s name designates its version. The most current version (since 2013) is 4.0. This number is sometimes left out when talked about it, but to unambiguously refer to the correct licence, it should be included.
Watch out for publisher defaults. During the submission process, many publishers will present their own licence options or suggest alternatives such as CC-BY-NC described as “compliant with open access”. These may not meet CERN’s requirements. Always explicitly select CC-BY-4.0 for your paper. If the publisher’s system does not offer CC-BY-4.0 as an option, contact the Open Science Office before proceeding.
Publishing a thesis, book, conference proceeding, CERN report
Uploading your thesis
If you wrote your (bachelor, master or PhD) thesis at CERN, worked with CERN equipment, or were advised by CERN staff, you should submit it to CDS/CERN Repository.
Who should submit their thesis?
- Students paid by CERN (CERN Doctoral Student Program)
- Students having used CERN equipment
- Students advised by CERN staff
- Students evaluating any workflows or processes at CERN (not necessarily related to physics, engineering or IT)
- Students working with data recorded in experiments at CERN
Old or new undergraduate and graduate (Diploma, Bachelor, Master, PhD, etc) theses are accepted.
For details how to submit your thesis to CDS, please consult the following page:
Publishing a book
If you want to publish a book, the Scientific Information Service might have offers for you.
For details about the programme, please consult the following page:
Publishing a conference proceeding
If you are organising a conference and would like to publish your conference proceedings, we provide a list of publishers who offer open-access publishing for conference proceedings:For details about the programme, please consult the following page:
Publishing a CERN Report
To publish a CERN report in the Yellow report series, please follow the instructions on the following page:
Copy-editing
For authors in need of copy-editing, typesetting or proofreading services, the publishing service can take care of it. The work will be given out to a company used to handle texts in the field of particle physics and accelerator technology. The related costs must be covered by the requestor via a CERN budget code.
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