Horizon Europe
In the Horizon Europe programme (2021-2027), some Open Science practices are mandatory, among them Open Access for all beneficiaries of the Grant Agreement. The Horizon Europe goes beyond Open Access to Open Science, for which it represents a comprehensive policy implemented from the proposal stage to project reporting. The Horizon Europe Regulation establishes the legal basis for the open science obligations and incentives that apply to beneficiaries.
Open science is an approach based on open cooperative working and the systematic sharing of knowledge and tools as early and as widely as possible in the process. It has the potential to increase the quality and efficiency of research and accelerate the advancement of knowledge and innovation by sharing results, making them more reusable and improving their reproducibility. It implies the involvement of all relevant actors.
In Horizon Europe, open science practices are considered in the evaluation of proposals, under 'excellence' and under 'quality and efficiency of implementation'. There are mandatory open science practices, which are required for all projects through the Model Grant Agreement and/or through the work programme or call conditions, and recommended practices (all open science practices that are not mandatory). Open Science Best Practices are encouraged through their assessment at the proposal stage. Proposers should be aware of the mandatory and recommended requirements.
Open Science practices include early and open sharing of research (e.g. through pre-registration, registered reports, preprints, or crowd-sourcing); management of research outputs; measures to ensure reproducibility of research results; open access to research outputs (such as publications, data, software, etc., models, algorithms and workflows); participation in open peer review; and involving all relevant knowledge actors, including citizens, civil society and end-users in the co-creation of Research & Innovation agendas and content (such as Citizen Science).
Horizon 2020
The promotion of Open Science through Horizon 2020 highlights the general objective of the European Union to increase access to scientific information.
Open access to scientific publications and data will allow:
- to improve the quality of results based on knowledge from previous research;
- fostering collaboration and avoiding duplicate efforts;
- to accelerate innovation;
- to involve citizens and society.
The European Commission considers that the use of scientific information resulting from public funding should not be paid for, but should benefit citizens in its entirety.
In this sense, researchers receiving funding from Horizon 2020 must ensure open access to all scientific publications with peer review resulting from their projects. This mandate comprises two steps: the deposit of publications in a repository; the availability of open access publications (which means that an embargo period of 6 to 12 months is allowed, depending on the scientific area).