Guidelines in Horizon Europe

Horizon Europe has a clear commitment to Open Science and describes mandatory and recommended Open Science practices for all funded projects. Recommended Open Science practices are promoted through their evaluation at the application stage.

Mandatory Open Science practices include (from Programme Guide Version 2.0):

• open access to scientific publications under the conditions required by the grant agreement;

• responsible management of research data in line with the FAIR principles of “Findability, Accessibility, Interoperability and Reusability”, notably through the generalised use of data management plans, and open access to research data under the principle ‘as open as possible, as closed as necessary’, under the conditions required by the grant agreement;

• information about the research outputs/tools/instruments needed to validate the conclusions of scientific publications or to validate/re-use research data;

• digital or physical access to the results needed to validate the conclusions of scientific publications, unless exceptions apply;

• in cases of public emergency, if requested by the granting authority, immediate open access to all research outputs under open licenses or, if exceptions apply, access under fair and reasonable conditions to legal entities that need the research outputs to address the public emergency.

These obligations are described in the Model Grant Agreement (Article 17) and detailed guidelines on complying with them are provided in the Annotated Grant Agreement (Article 17).

• Some open science practices are mandatory per specific work programmes or call conditions, which may provide for additional obligations to adhere to open science practices.