Horizon Europe open science requirements

How to comply with Horizon Europe (incl. MSCA and ERC) open access and open research data requirements? How to prepare a Data Management Plan (DMP)?

Horizon Europe 2021-2027

Open Science requirements of Horizon Europe focus on immediate open access and licenses

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:

--> Horizon Europe 2021-2027

MSCA projects (Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions)

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

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.
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 repositories.

Options for open access publishing

	How?	Deposition to a trusted repository	License	Please note
Gold and hybrid open access	Publish the article open access in a journal	Deposit the article in a trusted repository (ACRIS in Aalto University) at the latest at the time of publication	CC BY	Only APC fees in open access journals are eligible costs in Horizon Europe. Exception: in MSCA projects, APC fees in all journals are eligible costs ()
Green open access	Publish the article non-open access in a journal and self-archive the author accepted manuscript (AAM)	Deposit the AAM in a trusted repository (ACRIS in Aalto University) at the latest at the time of publication	CC BY	Only few publishers currently allow CC BY license for author accepted manuscripts (AAMs), in addition embargos may apply

How?

Deposition to a trusted repository

License

Please note

Gold and hybrid open access

Publish the article open access in a journal

Deposit the article in a trusted repository (ACRIS in Aalto University) at the latest at the time of publication

CC BY

Only APC fees in open access journals are eligible costs in Horizon Europe.

Exception: in MSCA projects, APC fees in all journals are eligible costs ()

Green open access

Publish the article non-open access in a journal and self-archive the author accepted manuscript (AAM)

Deposit the AAM in a trusted repository (ACRIS in Aalto University) at the latest at the time of publication

CC BY

Only few publishers currently allow CC BY license for author accepted manuscripts (AAMs), in addition embargos may apply

Use the to search for journals compliant with Horizon Europe open access mandate. Authors are always encouraged to check publisher's open access options before submitting their papers.
Please contact Open Science and ACRIS team at acris@aalto.fi for guidance and help.

Open access publishing fees (APC fees)

Only APC fees in open access journals are eligible costs in Horizon Europe.
- Exception: in MSCA projects, APC fees in all journals are eligible costs ()
APC fees in hybrid journals 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 contact the controller of your own department for assistance.
- .
Recommendation to use EC’s own open access publishing platform: , without publishing fees

Statements required in Horizon Europe publications

Scientific publications must acknowledge the EU support:

display the
include a funding statement, e.g. “Funded by the European Union (project name, acronym, project number)."
include 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.”

Prepare a Data Management Plan (DMP) and keep it updated throughout the course of the project.
Deposit research data in a trusted repository and provide open access to it (‘as open as possible, as closed as necessary’) under FAIR principles.
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.

What to publish?	All research data under principle 'As open as possible, as closed as necessary' unless legitimate interests or constraints apply, such as data protection rules, privacy, confidentiality, trade secrets, security rules or intellectual property rights. In such cases, data can be kept restricted, closed or under embargo, but you must explain the legitimate exception(s) for restrictes access to research data. Find more information on
Where to publish?	Deposit research data in a trusted repository. Trusted repositories are infrastructures that provide reliable and long-term access to digital resources such as data, publications, etc. Find more information on . If required in the call conditions, the repository must be federated in the EOSC in compliance with EOSC requirements. Please note: Personal websites and databases, publisher websites, as well as cloud storage services, Academia.edu, ResearchGate etc. are not considered repositories.
When to publish?	Research data should be deposited as soon as possible after its generation and, at the latest, by the end of the project. In exceptional cases in which specific constraints apply (e.g. security rules), deposition can be delayed beyond the end of the project. Research data underpinning a scientific publication should be deposited at the latest at the time of publication and in line with standard community practices.
What license to use?	Research data should be licensed under the latest version of CC BY (attribution required) or CC 0 (public domain), or equivalent. Software: appropriate software licenses, such as those listed as free by the Free Software Foundation and listed as open source by the Open Source Initiative, is strongly recommended.
Requirements for metadata	When you deposit research data in a trusted repository, this should be described with rich metadata in line with the FAIR principles. In practice, this means that you should choose a repository where metadata follows standards and includes (PIDs) for the dataset (e.g. ), the author(s) (e.g. or ) and, if possible the organization(s) (e.g. ) and grant (e.g. grant DOI). Metadata should be open access under a CC 0 license or equivalent. This is also recommended in cases where data must be closed or restricted but there are no compelling reasons for metadata not to be findable and accessible.

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.
Involving all relevant knowledge actors	Involvement of citizens, civil society and end-users in co-creation of content (e.g. crowd-sourcing, etc.)

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

Early & Open Sharing pp. 43-44
Reproducibility of research output pp. 43, 49-50
Open access to research outputs pp. 50-52
Open peer-review pp. 53-54
Citizen, civil society and end-user engagement pp. 54-56

Horizon Europe Data Management Plan (DMP)

Proposal stage
- In the proposal stage, a brief outline of research data management is required.
In the beginning of the project
- Submit your DMP within the first 6 months of the project.
- A template and 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 for justifiable reasons).
  - Help and support available: researchdata@aalto.fi.
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

ERC projects

Use of the template is a recommendation.

Contact information

Questions on open access: acris@aalto.fi

Questions on research data: researchdata@aalto.fi

Updated: 16.5.2025
Published: 12.3.2021

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