EU Horizon Europe: open science requirements

ERC projects (European Research Council)

Open science requirements are in line with Horizon Europe requirements described on this page. In addition, more information is available at:

Open Science in ERC Projects | European Research Council

MSCA projects (Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions)

Open science requirements are in line with Horizon Europe requirements described on this page.

How to comply with Horizon Europe mandate for publications - Guide for researchers

1. Peer-reviewed publications must be made immediately open access under open licenses (such as Creative Commons):
   • 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.
2. Peer-reviewed publications must be deposited to a trusted repository at the latest at the time of publication.
   • Personal websites and databases, publisher websites, as well as cloud storage services, Academia.edu, ResearchGate etc. are not considered as trusted repositories.

Options for open access publishing

1. Only open access fees of open access journals are eligible costs in Horizon Europe.
   • Exception: in MSCA projects, open access fees of all journal types are eligible costs (MSCA Financial Guide, p. 41)
2. Open access fees of other journal types are not eligible costs in Horizon Europe. However, Aalto's open access agreements may cover these fees.
   • Apart from open access agreements, Aalto University does not have a central open access fund.
   • If you publish in a journal which is not covered by our agreements, please consult your department controllers in advance regarding the fee.
3. Recommendation to use EU’s own open access publishing platform: Open Research Europe (ORE), without publishing fees.

Annotated Grant Agreement, p. 389

Scientific publications must acknowledge the EU support:

1. Display the European flag (emblem)
2. Display the funding statement, e.g. “Funded by the European Union (project name, acronym, project number)."
3. Indicate a following disclaimer:

“Funded by the European Union. Views and opinions expressed are however those of the author(s) only and do not necessarily reflect those of the European Union or [name of the granting authority]. Neither the European Union nor the granting authority can be held responsible for them.”

Always check the programme-specific guidelines and exact wording with the Project Officer. 

How to comply with Horizon Europe mandate for Research Data Management - Guide for researchers

1. Prepare a Data Management Plan (DMP) and keep it updated throughout the course of the project.
2. Deposit research data in a trusted repository and provide open access to it (‘as open as possible, as closed as necessary’) under FAIR principles.
3. Provide information (via the same repository) about any research output or any other tools and instruments needed to re-use or validate the data.
   • Research outputs, tools and instruments may include data, software, algorithms, protocols, models, workflows, electronic notebooks and others.

Early and open sharing of research

• Preregistration, registered reports, preprints, etc.

Open access to research outputs (other than publications and research data)

• Software, models, algorithms, workflows etc. 

Participation in open peer-review

• Publishing in open peer-reviewed journals or platforms, e.g. Open Research Europe

Involving all relevant knowledge actors

• Involvement of citizens, civil society and end-users in co-creation of content (e.g. crowd-sourcing)

For more information on open science practices of the Horizon Europe 2021-2027, please see: 

Horizon Europe Programme Guide

Annotated Grant Agreement

Horizon Europe General Model Grant Agreement

Reporting open access in Horizon Europe - Aalto University Wiki

1. Proposal stage

   • In the proposal stage, a brief outline of research data management is required.

2. In the beginning of the project

   • Submit your DMP within the first 6 months of the project.
   • A Horizon Europe DMP template and ERC DMP template are provided but the use of the template is a recommendation.  
     • In general, the template guides you to describe how you will make your research data findable, accessible, interoperable, and reusable (FAIR).  
     • Aalto's guidance on Data Management Plans.
     • If you have justified reasons not to open some parts of the data describe the reason in the DMP (see Annotated Grant Agreement p. 391 for justifiable reasons).
     • Help and support available: researchdata@aalto.fi.

3. During and at completion of the project

   • The DMP must be updated. Typically, updates are made at the same time as the periodic evaluations. The update needs to be made together with the final review if there are no scheduled reviews.

Horizon Europe and MSCA projects

Horizon Europe DMP template 

ERC projects

ERC DMP template

 Use of the template is a recommendation.