Quantitative analysis of the publishing landscape in high-energy physics

World-wide collaboration in high-energy physics (HEP) is a tradition which dates back several decades, with scientific publications mostly coauthored by scientists from different countries. This coauthorship phenomenon makes it difficult to identify precisely the ``share'' of each country in HEP scientific production. One year's worth of HEP scientific articles published in peer-reviewed journals is analysed and their authors are uniquely assigned to countries. This method allows the first correct estimation on a pro rata basis of the share of HEP scientific publishing among several countries and institutions. The results provide an interesting insight into the geographical collaborative patterns of the HEP community. The HEP publishing landscape is further analysed to provide information on the journals favoured by the HEP community and on the geographical variation of their author bases. These results provide quantitative input to the ongoing debate on the possible transition of HEP publishing to an Open Access model.

Foreword. This paper reports the results of a recent detailed study of the publishing landscape in high energy physics. We thought that because of its direct relevance to the high energy physics community, this important quantitative input to the debate on the transition to Open Access naturally finds its place in our journal.

Marc Henneaux, JHEP Scientific Director