The European Commission

What is covered by the policy

"All peer-reviewed scientific publications related to results from the project."

Please note: This includes long-form publications such as monographs and book chapters

Further criteria

Deposit and embargo

"Provide open access to the publication via the repository within 6 months (for LS or PE) or 12 months (for SH)"

Exemption for open access embargo post-project

"There is no such maximum embargo period for post-grant publications"

Paying for Horizon 2020 publication costs

"Publishing costs such as fees for open access to scientific publications (including monographs and other books as well as book chapters) and for research data management are eligible if incurred during the lifetime of the project and provided that they are in line with the general cost eligibility criteria."

"Only reimburse open access fees that are incurred and invoiced during the lifetime of your project"

(All quotations taken from policy pages and PDFs on 12/06/2023)

1. Make all research findings available via a preprint server (or ORA) prior to peer review
2. Deposit all research publications relevant to COVID-19 into ORA with a CC BY licence by the date of publication at the latest
3. Include information on any tools and instruments needed to re-use, reproduce or validate the conclusion/s of the publication e.g. software, workflows, models or materials
4. Include statements on availability of underlying data (see our templates page for examples)

For more information please see the Horizon 2020 COVID-19 research guidelines. 

What is covered by the policy

"All peer-reviewed scientific publications related to results from the project."

Please note: This includes long-form publications such as monographs and book chapters

Further criteria

Funder acknowledgement and disclaimer

"Funding statement and disclaimer:

'Funded by the European Union (ERC, acronym, project number). Views and opinions expressed are however those of the author(s) only and do not necessarily reflect those of the European Union or the European Research Council Executive Agency. Neither the European Union nor the granting authority can be held responsible for them.'"

Licence requirement

"You must ensure that the authors (or the host institution) retain sufficient intellectual property rights, namely immediate deposition under a CC BY or equivalent license (for long-text publications the license can exclude commercial uses and/or derivative works)."

Allowances post-grant for embargo periods

"Since the grant cannot be used to cover expenses related to open access after the grant, for post-grant publications there is some flexibility concerning the maximum acceptable embargo period."

Paying for Horizon Europe publication costs

Eligible costs - Budgeted for in your grant

"Publishing fees (including APCs/BPCs, but also e.g. page charges or colour charges) are eligible costs if incurred during the lifetime of your project and in line with the provisions of your grant agreement. This also applies to books to the extent that they cover the first digital open access edition of the book."

"So-called ‘mirror journals’ or ‘sister journals’ of subscription journals are considered to be full open access journals; publication fees in such journals are in principle eligible for reimbursement."

Ineligible payments

"If you publish in a subscription or hybrid journal, in a book for which some parts are not open access, or on a publishing platform that does not provide all of its scholarly content in open access."

"...so-called ‘transformative journals’ are considered to be ordinary hybrid journals (no exceptional rules concerning eligibility of publishing fees)."

"Printing fees for monographs and other books are NOT eligible."

(All quotations taken from policy pages and PDFs on 12/06/2023)

While the UK was not associated to Horizon Europe, UKRI, on behalf of the Department for Science, Innovation and Technology, have guaranteed funds awarded to researchers who have been successful at applying for a Horizon Europe grant.

Authors funded by the ‘Horizon Europe guarantee’ scheme are funded by UKRI but will need to follow the Horizon Europe open access policy. They are not eligible to apply for funding from the UKRI block grant and need to fund OA publication costs from their grant.

Researchers applying to Horizon Europe should include publication costs in their budgets so that they can comply with the Horizon Europe open access policy and use these funds to pay for OA publication costs.

Read more guidance about the Horizon Europe Grantee scheme

The ERC has written an overview of the criteria of 'compliant repositories'. These include:

Institutional repositories

• Oxford University Research Archive

Subject-specific repositories

• EuropePMC – life sciences
• arXiv – physical sciences
• CORE - humanities
• OAPEN Library – For monographs and books.

General repositories

• Zenodo, set up by CERN together with OpenAIRE
• Figshare
• HAL

"Note that the following are not considered open access repositories:

• Academia.edu, ResearchGate and similar platforms that do not allow open access under the terms required,
• Personal websites and databases or project websites,
• Publisher/journal websites, as well as
• Cloud storage services (Dropbox, Google Drive, etc.)."