What is Open Access?

Open access to publications refers to online access to scientific publications at no cost for the end user. Immediate open access under open licences is a mandatory Open Science requirement under Horizon Europe (see conditions required by the Grant Agreement) for scientific publications that have been peer-reviewed.

Open Access in the wider sense refers to online access to research outputs in general, including besides publications also e.g. software, models, algorithms, protocols and electronic notebooks. This infosheet focuses on open access to publications.

There are different types of open access:

• Gold Open Access: publicly accessible publication in an online Open Access journal or an Open Access publication platform; authors have to pay an Article Processing Charge.
• Diamond Open Access: publication in an online Open Access journal or an Open Access publication platform; all publications are freely accessible for authors and readers, there is no fee for the author to publish; journals and platforms are financially supported by e.g. universities, research institutions, funding organisations, and governments
• Green Open Access: publication in any journal or on any publication platform, followed by self-archiving the article (at least the ‘author accepted manuscript’) in an online database
• Hybrid Open Access: optional Open Access publication in traditional journals for an additional fee

Open Access Requirements

• Make peer-reviewed manuscript (Author Accepted Manuscript (AAM) or Version of Record (VoR)) available in a metadata-ready trusted repository
• Immediate Open Access (no embargo period)
• Authors publish the AAM or VoR under a CC-BY4.0 licence to retain their rights
• Provide information about research outputs or instruments and tools that are needed to validate the conclusions of the publication
• Add the acronym or code of the project

How to publish Open Access

If scientific peer-reviewed publications are produced in a Horizon Europe project, they must be open access immediately at publication time under open licenses (such as Creative Commons), providing specific minimum sets of rights of reuse (CC BY for articles and book chapters in edited books and CC BY, CC BY-NC, CC BY-ND, CC BY-NC-ND or equivalent for long-text formats.

Proposers should be aware that beneficiaries are required to retain sufficient intellectual property rights (IPR) to comply with their open access obligations. Authors may need to interact with prospective publishers, in particular when they publish in venues that are not open access. To facilitate compliance with their open access obligations, beneficiaries/researchers are encouraged to notify publishers of their grant agreement obligations (including the licensing requirements) already at manuscript submission.

Addressing Open Access in your proposal

Elaborate in your proposal on how you will meet the open access requirements, i.e. the deposition and immediate open access, providing also information on the (subscription-based or open access) publishing venues that you will use. You can also give details on the trusted repository/repositories that will ensure open access to your publications is provided.

Costs of Open Access

• Publication Fees are eligible costs if the publishing venue is full Open Access;
• In case of hybrid venues, publication fees are not eligible costs (exception: Marie-Sklodowska-Curie-Action).
• Any printing fees for monographs, books or articles are not eligible

Open Research Europe

Open Research Europe is an open access publishing venue for researchers across all disciplines that are funded by the European Commission. The costs are covered by the European Commission, there are no costs for authors or readers.

Resources for further information

• Horizon Europe Programme Guide, pages 42-57
• Annotated Model Grant Agreement, art. 17
• Open Research Europe (ORE), the open access publishing platform of the European Commmission for all disciplines, for research stemming from Horizon Europe
• Directory of Open Access Journals: Locate trustworthy open access journals in your field of work
• Journal Checker Tool: Check whether a journal has an Open Access policy that is aligned to the Horizon Europe requirements
• Directory of Open Access Books: Locate trustworthy open access publishers and open access monographs
• OpenAIRE provides tools and webinars on Open Science-topics