SCOPE: SCUBA-2 Continuum Observations of Pre-protostellar Evolution -
  Survey Description and Compact Source Catalogue
  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-um 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 $N_{H_{2}}$ $>$ 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.
