We present the first release of the data and compact-source catalogue for the JCMT Large Program SCUBA-2 Continuum Observations of Pre-protostellar Evolution ( SCOPE ) .
SCOPE consists of 850- \upmu m continuum observations of 1235 Planck Galactic Cold Clumps ( PGCCs ) made with the Submillimetre Common-User Bolometer Array 2 on the James Clerk Maxwell Telescope .
These data are at an angular resolution of 14.4 arcsec , significantly improving upon the 353-GHz resolution of Planck at 5 arcmin , and allowing for a catalogue of 3528 compact sources in 558 PGCCs .
We find that the detected PGCCs have significant sub-structure , with 61 per cent of detected PGCCs having 3 or more compact sources , with filamentary structure also prevalent within the sample .
A detection rate of 45 per cent is found across the survey , which is 95 per cent complete to Planck column densities of N _ { n { H _ { 2 } } } > 5 \times 10 ^ { 21 } cm ^ { -2 } .
By positionally associating the SCOPE compact sources with YSOs , the star formation efficiency , as measured by the ratio of luminosity to mass , in nearby clouds is found to be similar to that in the more distant Galactic Plane , with the column density distributions also indistinguishable from each other .