Open science in Horizon Europe

The EU Open Research Repository supports you in complying with the related open science requirements in Horizon Europe. Overall, Horizon Europe implements mandatory open science practices for all beneficiaries which includes:

• open access to peer-reviewed scientific publications (including books and other monographs)

• responsible management of research data in line with the FAIR principles of ‘Findability’, ‘Accessibility’, ‘Interoperability’ and ‘Reusability’, notably through the generalised use of data management plans, and open access to research data under the principle ‘as open as possible, as closed as necessary’.

• information about the research outputs/tools/instruments needed to validate the conclusions of scientific publications or to validate/re-use research data;

• digital or physical access to the results needed to validate the conclusions of scientific publications, unless exceptions apply;

• in cases of public emergency, if requested by the granting authority, immediate open access to all research outputs under open licenses or, if exceptions apply, access under fair and reasonable conditions to legal entities that need the research outputs to address the public emergency.

Preparation of proposal? Reference documents?

If you're in the proposal preparations phase, we suggest that you consult the Horizon Europe Programme Guide which has a chapter on open science. The guide provides detailed information about open science requirements and practices with a particular focus on the preparation of proposals and how open science is taken into account in the evaluation of the proposal. The guide complements another reference document, AGA — Annotated Grant Agreement, which provides detailed guidance on how to comply with the open science obligations. The requirements related to open science is described in the Annotated Grant Agreement in Article 17 with specific details in Annex 5.

What are the specific requirements?

Attention: Please refer to your exact grant agreement to check if there's any exception or additional obligations!

Open access to peer-reviewed scientific publications

You must ensure open access to peer-reviewed scientific publications. In particular, you must ensure:

• Deposit: the publication is deposited in a trusted repository (e.g. EU Open Research Repository) - either the published version of the final peer-reviewed manuscript accepted for publication. 
• Immediate open access: it must be deposited latest at the time of publication (i.e. no embargo's allowed)
• License: You should use Creative Common Attribution International (CC-BY, latest version), or a license with equivalent rights.
• Metadata: You must provide specific details such as:
  • Authors
  • Title
  • Publication date
  • Publication venue (e.g. journal title)
  • Horizon Europe or Euroatom funding
  • Licensing terms
  • Persistent identifiers for a) the publication, b) authors, and if possible c) for affiliation/organisations
• Related research outputs: Information should be provided about any research output or any other tools and instruments needed to validate the conclusions of the scientific publication (e.g. in EU Open Research Repository via the "Related works" field).

Exceptions apply for monographs and other long-text formats where the license licence may exclude commercial uses and derivative works (e.g. CC BY-NC, CC BY-ND).

Research data management and open access to research data

You must manage the digital research data generated responsibly, in line with the FAIR principles by taking all of the following actions:

• DMP: establish a data management plan (‘DMP’) (and regularly update it)
• Deposit: deposit the data in a trusted repository (e.g. the EU Open Research Repository) as soon as possible and within the deadlines set out in the DMP.
• Open access:  ensure open access — via the repository — to the deposited data (as soon as possible and within the deadlines set out in the DMP), following the principle as open as possible, as closed as necessary.
• License: You should use Creative Common Attribution International (CC-BY, latest version), or Creative Commons Public Domain Dedication (CC0), or a license/dedication with equivalent rights.

Note, that certain exceptions apply for specific cases, and that each call my also have additional requirements.

Open science: additional practices

You are encouraged not only to share peer-reviewed scientific publications and research data, but to also all other research outputs (software, posters, presentations, project reports/deliverables) as open access and similar to publications and research data deposit them in a trusted repository.

How does the EU Open Research Repository support you?

TL;DR: Deposit your research output in the EU Open Research Repository, and we'll automatically check the details you are required to provide.

Deposit requirement

First of all, there’s a requirement in the grant agreements for both scientific and research data that you must deposit them in a trusted repository.  EU Open Research Repository as part of Zenodo is considered as a trusted repository, and you can therefore comply with the deposit requirement by depositing publications and data in Zenodo. There are many other trusted repositories, and in particular for research data it makes sense to deposit in domain-specific repositories. Similarly, your institution may have additional requirements to deposit your material in an institutional repository.

Metadata requirements

The grant agreement also states a list of requirements for the metadata of the deposited research outputs. Part of these requirements (on machine-actionability and licensing of the metadata) is the responsibility of Zenodo and we comply. The remaining parts of the requirements is automatically checked when you deposit in the EU Open Research Repository, and we will warn you if you’re missing to provide any information such as for instance the funding information.

License requirements

We also automatically check the license requirements for journal articles, books, software, data and other output. We will warn you if you've chosen a different license than required, and warn you to check if it provides equivalent rights.