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Open Access: Open Science Requirements Horizon Europe

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Guidance on Open Science Practices (Horizon Europe)

Open science (sometimes referred to as open research or open scholarship), helps increase the transparency, efficiency and quality of research and encompasses a broad range of research practices and activities, including Open Access. Researchers are encouraged to incorporate OS practices throughout the research lifecycle, from the proposal and design stage through to project completion, dissemination and reporting.

In Horizon Europe open science is evaluated under the criteria of “Excellence” and “Quality and efficiency of implementation.” Pages 38-46 of the Horizon Europe Programme Guide provide useful guidance on OS practices and resources.

Excellence

In the methodology section, researchers should provide concrete and specific details of how they will adopt the mandatory and recommended OS practices in no more than one page, unless sufficient justification is provided that OS practices are not applicable to the proposal.

Capacity of Participants and Consortium as a whole

Here you can include examples or details of expertise and/or track record in OS practices that are relevant to the project.

Implementing Horizon Europe - strategic planning

Research Data Management Requirements

Recipients of Horizon Europe grants must manage the digital research data collected throughout the project in line with the FAIR principles and must deposit in a trusted open access repository.  

The Definition of FAIR principles

  • Findable
  • Accessible
  • Interoperable
  • Reusable 

Part A of Proposals

Researchers must demonstrate how they will adopt OS practices as relevant to their discipline, including mandatory open science practices - Open access to research outputs, including publications, data (where possible), software, code etc. as well as recommended open science practices.

Mandatory Open Science Practices

Researchers must demonstrate how they will adopt OS practices as relevant to their discipline, including:

  • Horizon Europe mandates full and immediate Open Access to peer-reviewed publications under an open licence (CC BY for journal articles; for monographs and other long form works this can be CC BY-NC or CC BY-ND). 
  • A copy of the published version or the final peer-reviewed manuscript must be deposited in a trusted open access repository at the time of publication, even if the article has been published in a fully open access journal. 
  • Researchers should give specific details of where and how they will deposit their research outputs under open licences. 
  • Research Repository UCD provides a trusted repository for UCD publications. Other trusted repositories include ArXiv and Zenodo. UCD Library can provide advice on identifying a suitable trusted open access repository for your publications.
  • You may also wish to give details of any open access publication venues you plan to submit to. UCD Library has a range of open access publishing agreements with publishers which you may also wish to refer to.

 

Responsible management of research data in line with the FAIR principles [Open access to research data and other research outputs should be addressed in the section on research data management of your proposal]

Information about the research outputs/tools/instruments needed to validate the conclusions of scientific publications or research data.

 

Digital or physical access to the results needed to validate the conclusions of scientific publications, unless exceptions apply.

Recommended Open Science Practices

Where relevant to the discipline and your proposal, consider including details of how you will adopt some or all of the following:

 

Early and open sharing of research

  • You may wish to indicate how you will share your research on preprint servers such as Zenodo, ArXiv, MedRXiv, PsyArxiv, SocArxiv, BioRXiv etc., other engagement with pre-publication dissemination channels, preregistration of the research plan in a public repository (e.g. OSF, PROSPERO), or publication of registered reports prior to data collection where relevant to the discipline.

 

Use of open research infrastructure for knowledge sharing and research dissemination

Actions to increase the reproducibility of your research

Participation in open peer review 

  • A number of journals and publishing platforms now require or offer open peer review as an option - give details if any of your planned publication venue(s) offer open peer review if you anticipate availing of this.

 

Open collaboration within and beyond the scientific community through public engagement, citizen science, and involvement of end-users

  • Engagement activities may include co-design (workshops, focus groups etc. to inform the design and development of research agendas or roadmaps), co-creation (e.g. directly involving citizens or users in data collection, implementation or as co-researchers), or co-assessment (involvement in feedback or monitoring of the project).