Open Science

The mission of the ERC is to support excellent research in all fields of science and scholarship. The main outputs of this research are new knowledge, ideas and understanding, which the ERC expects its grantees to publish in peer-reviewed articles and monographs. The ERC considers that providing free online access to these materials is the most effective way of ensuring that the fruits of the research it funds can be accessed, read, and used as the basis for further research.

Key Concepts

This glossary outlines the main concepts and terms related to open science in the context of the ERC programme. For further information, consult the Annotated Grant Agreements for Horizon 2020 or for Horizon Europe.

Open access	The practice of providing online access to research outputs, free of charge to the end-user, and without any legal or technical obstacles, such as the requirement to have a user account or to solve a captcha.

Research outputs	Results to which online access can be given in the form of scientific publications, digital data or other engineered outcomes and processes such as software, algorithms, protocols, models, workflows and electronic notebooks.

Repositories	A repository is an online archive, where researchers can deposit digital research outputs and provide (open) access to them. Repositories help manage and provide access to scientific outputs, such as publications, data, software, among others. They also contribute to the long-term preservation of digital assets. Personal websites and databases, publisher websites, as well as cloud storage services (Dropbox, Google drive, etc.) are not considered repositories. Academia.edu, ResearchGate and similar platforms do not allow open access under the terms required and are not considered suitable as repositories.

Trusted repositories	Trusted repositories display specific characteristics of organisational, technical and procedural quality such as services, mechanisms and/or provisions that are intended to secure the integrity and authenticity of their contents, thus facilitating their use and re-use in the short- and long-term. They have specific provisions in place and offer explicit information online about their policies, which define their services (e.g. acquisition, access, security of content, long-term sustainability of service including funding etc.). In order to be considered ‘trusted’, a repository has to fall into one of the following categories: Certified repositories (e.g. CoreTrustSeal, nestor Seal DIN31644, ISO16363); Internationally recognized discipline or domain-specific repositories commonly used and endorsed by the respective research communities; General-purpose repositories or institutional repositories fulfilling certain criteria as described in the Horizon Europe Annotated Grant Agreement.

Machine-readable / Machine-actionable information	Digital information is machine-readable if it is presented in a structured format that can be automatically read by a computer. Machine-actionable information is structured in a consistent way so that computers can be programmed against the structure.

Persistent Identifier (PID)	A long-lasting and reliable reference to a resource or a person, providing the information required to reliably identify, verify and locate it. The resource may be, among others, a publication, a dataset or a person, an organization (such as a funder or university), a piece of software or hardware. Examples for commonly used PIDs include DOI and handle, ORCID and ResearcherID, ROR ID, but also accession numbers within specific disciplines, notably in the Life Sciences (such as accession numbers in the Protein Data Bank), among many others.
FAIR principles	Guidelines to improve the Findability, Accessibility, Interoperability and Reusability of digital objects and the technical specifications necessary for this to happen. They were first published in 2016 (https://doi.org/10.1038/sdata.2016.18).

Creative Commons licences	A licence is a statement by which a copyright holder informs users what they may and may not do with a copyrighted work. The Creative Commons copyright licences and tools provide a standardized way to grant users copyright permissions, allowing material to be shared and reused under terms that are flexible and legally sound. Some important examples are: The Creative Commons Attribution International Licence (CC BY) lets others distribute, remix, adapt, and build upon the licenced work, even commercially, as long as they credit the original creator. This is the most accommodating of licences offered, recommended for maximum dissemination and use of licenced materials. To exclude commercial use or derivative works, a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial International Licence (CC BY-NC) can be used; to exclude adaptations of the work, a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives International Licence (CC BY-ND) can be chosen. The Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives International Licence (CC BY-NC-ND) excludes both. Holders of copyright or database rights can use the Creative Commons Universal Public Domain Dedication (CC0) to waive all their interests that may exist in their work worldwide. There are other licences and public domain tools providing equivalent rights.
Publications: Key Concepts

Long-text publications	Research outputs such as books/monographs and edited volumes, which normally examine one or more related research issues in depth and are significantly lengthier in terms of words and pages than single articles. In Horizon 2020, book chapters are considered long-text publications, whereas in Horizon Europe, book chapters are treated similarly to journal articles and are not considered long-text publications.

Full open access publishing venues	Publishing venues such as journals, books or publishing platforms whose entire scholarly content is published in open access.

Hybrid publishing venues	Journals, books and publishing platforms that provide part of their scholarly content in open access, while another part is accessible through subscriptions/payments. So-called mirror and sister journals, i.e. more recently established open access versions of existing subscription journals, are not considered hybrid journals.

Peer review	The assessment of manuscripts or publications by reviewers with expertise in the specific fields addressed: Articles are peer-reviewed when they have been scrutinized and assessed positively. The number of positive assessments necessary is set by each publishing venue. Monographs and other long-text publications (as well as chapters in edited volumes) are considered to be peer-reviewed if the manuscript or a substantial part thereof (or the full text in the case of a chapter in an edited volume) has been reviewed at least by one independent expert external to the publisher or to the series scientific editor(s). PhD theses and Habilitations for professorial degrees are considered peer-reviewed if they are formally published, given that the review by external experts is generally part of the assessment of the candidate's research work for the PhD degree or the 'venia legendi' (Latin for ‘permission to read’) in the case of a Habilitation.

Author Accepted Manuscript (AAM)	The author final manuscript that incorporates all revisions following peer-review.

Version of Record (VoR)	The final published version of the manuscript that has usually been copyedited and typeset.

Article or Book Processing Charges (APC/BPC)	Publication fees charged to authors to make their work available through open access (in either full open access or hybrid open access publishing venues).

Embargo periods	Periods imposed by publishers, during which a manuscript may not be freely shared. After the end of the embargo period, the AAM (and occasionally also the VoR) can be shared in open access, under certain conditions imposed by the publisher.
Research data: Key concepts
Digital Research Data	Information in digital form (in particular facts or numbers), collected to be examined and used as a basis for reasoning, discussion or calculation; this includes statistics, results of experiments, measurements, observations resulting from fieldwork, survey results, interview recordings and images.

Research Data Management (RDM)	The process within the research lifecycle that includes the data collection or acquisition, organisation, curation, storage, (long-term) preservation, security, quality assurance, allocation of persistent identifiers (PIDs), provision of metadata in line with disciplinary requirements, licencing, and rules and procedures for sharing of data.

Data Management Plan (DMP)	A document that outlines from the start of the project the main aspects of the lifecycle of research outputs, notably including data. This includes their provenance, organisation and curation, as well as adequate provisions for their access, preservation, sharing, and eventual deletion, both during and after a project.

Research Data Repository	A repository specifically designed for research data. This can be subject-based/thematic, institutional or centralised.

Scientific Publications

Open Science requirements are embedded in your ERC grant agreement and depend on the Framework Programme (ERC call) under which you obtained funding. Read more about the requirements here, as well as practical steps related to the publication and sharing of your peer-reviewed manuscripts:

FP7 (ERC work programmes 2012-2013)

FP7: What is required?

As the holder of an ERC Frontier Research Grant (i.e. Starting Grant, Consolidator Grant, Advanced Grant or Synergy Grant), you are required to:

Deposit an electronic copy of any scientific publication related to results from the ERC-funded project that has been published before or after the final report, in a repository for scientific publications. The version deposited can be either the published version or the final accepted manuscript. Deposition has to take place at the moment of publication.
Make best efforts to ensure that this electronic copy becomes freely and electronically available to anyone through the repository:
immediately, if the scientific publication is published "open access", i.e., if an electronic version is also available free of charge via the publisher, or within 6 months of publication.

FP7: Step-by-step guide

Acknowledge ERC funding

For all kinds of publications, use the official text included in your Grant Agreement. When feasible, add the ERC logo.

"This project has received funding from the European Research Council under the European Union's Seventh Framework Programme (FP7/2007-2013; ERC grant agreement n° xxxx)."

This also applies to other outputs of your project (see 'Communicating your research').

Submit your manuscript to the publishing venue of your choice

Ensure that your publication is deposited in a suitable repository of your choice, immediately upon publication

This can be the published version or the final manuscript accepted for publication, after peer review.

Make best efforts that the publication is available through the repository in open access

Open access should be provided: immediately, if the scientific publication is published "open access", i.e., if an electronic version is also available free of charge via the publisher, or within 6 months of publication.

Horizon 2020 (2014-2020)

Horizon 2020: What is required?

As the holder of an ERC Frontier Research Grant (i.e. Starting Grant, Consolidator Grant, Advanced Grant or Synergy Grant) or Proof-of-Concept Grant funded under a Horizon 2020 ERC Work Programme, you have to ensure open access to all peer-reviewed scientific publications relating to the results of your ERC-funded project. Specifically,

As soon as possible and at the latest on publication, deposit a machine-readable electronic copy of the published version (VoR) or final peer-reviewed manuscript accepted for publication (AAM) in a repository for scientific publications. Moreover, you must aim to deposit at the same time the research data needed to validate the results presented in the deposited scientific publications.
Provide open access to the deposited publication, via the repository, at the latest: (i) on publication, if an electronic version is available for free via the publisher, or (ii) within six months of publication (twelve months for publications in the social sciences and humanities) in any other case.
Ensure open access, via the repository, to the bibliographic metadata that identify the deposited publication. These metadata must include a persistent identifier. If the repository allows for this, you are strongly encouraged to ensure that the bibliographic metadata also include additional information such as the European Research Council (ERC) as funding source, the grant number, the title of the action and its acronym, the publication date, and the length of the embargo period (if applicable).

In Horizon 2020, ERC grantees/authors are encouraged to retain copyright, granting the publisher an appropriate licence to publish rather than signing a copyright transfer agreement. To facilitate reuse, the use of Creative Commons (CC) or similar licences is encouraged. CC BY is a good legal tool for providing open access in its broadest sense.

For publications that do not primarily report on original results from the ERC-funded research, the obligations above do not apply (such as review papers or books consisting of a compilation of articles that have already been published elsewhere). However, the ERC encourages you to provide open access also to such publications.

Horizon 2020: Step-by-step guide

The obligations of the grant agreement related to open access apply to all peer-reviewed scientific publications related to results from the project. This means in particular that they apply regardless whether the underlying research has been supported in whole or only in part by the ERC.

Before publishing results related to your Horizon 2020 ERC-funded project, take into account that you are required by your grant agreement to take the following steps:

Acknowledge ERC funding

For all kinds of publications, use the official text included in your Grant Agreement. When feasible, add the ERC logo.

"This project has received funding from the European Research Council (ERC) under the European Union's Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme (grant agreement n° xxxx)."

This also applies to other outputs of your project (see 'Communicating your research').

Select a publishing venue taking into account your contractual obligations and submit your manuscript

Keep in mind that open access to the publication (AAM or VoR) has to be provided via a repository at the latest within 6 months (for LS or PE) or 12 months (for SH) after publication. Check if the publisher’s embargo period is compatible with this requirement.

Ensure that your publication is deposited in a suitable repository of your choice immediately upon publication

Option 1		Option 2
Immediate open access via the publisher Immediately deposit your publication (generally the VoR) in a repository of your choice and provide open access through the repository Publishing fees (including APCs/BPCs, but also e.g. page charges or colour charges) are eligible costs if incurred during the lifetime of your project and in line with the provisions in your grant agreement		No immediate open access via the publisher Self-archive your publication (generally the AAM) in a repository of your choice, immediately upon publication Provide open access to the publication via the repository within 6 months (for LS or PE) or 12 months (for SH) Publishing fees (e.g. page charges, colour charges) are eligible costs if incurred during the lifetime of your project and in line with the provisions in your grant agreement

Horizon Europe (2021-2027)

Horizon Europe: What is required?

As an ERC grant holder funded under a Horizon Europe ERC Work Programme, you have to ensure open access to peer-reviewed scientific publications relating to the results of your ERC-funded project. Specifically,

At the latest at the time of publication, a machine-readable electronic copy of the published version (VoR), or the final peer-reviewed manuscript accepted for publication (AAM), must be deposited in a trusted repository for scientific publications.
Immediate open access to the deposited publication must be provided via the repository, under the latest available version of the Creative Commons Attribution International Licence (CC BY) or a licence with equivalent rights. For long-text publications such as monographs and edited volumes (but not book chapters), the licence may exclude commercial uses and/or derivative works (such as CC BY-NC, CC BY-ND, CC BY-NC-ND).
The authors of the publication (or the institution that is the legal beneficiary of the ERC grant) must retain sufficient intellectual property rights to allow compliance with the requirements of the grant agreement.
Information must be provided via the repository about any research outputs or any other tools and instruments needed to validate the conclusions of the scientific publication.
Note that the metadata of deposited publications must also be open under a Creative Common Public Domain Dedication (CC 0) or equivalent, and must be in line with the FAIR principles (Findable, Accessible, Interoperable and Re-usable), in particular machine-actionable.

You also need to provide information in the metadata at least about the following: publication (author(s), title, date of publication, publication venue); Horizon Europe funding; grant project name, acronym and number; licensing terms. The metadata also have to include persistent identifiers for the publication (e.g. DOI), for the authors involved in the ERC-action (e.g. ORCIDs) and, if possible, for their organisations (e.g. ROR IDs) and the grant (e.g. Grant DOI). Where applicable, the metadata must include persistent identifiers for any research outputs, or any other tools and instruments needed to validate the conclusions of the publication.

For publications that do not primarily report on original results from the ERC-funded research, the obligations above do not apply (e.g. review papers or books consisting of a compilation of articles that have already been published elsewhere). However, the ERC encourages you to provide open access also to such publications.

You will be asked to indicate your scientific publications in your scientific mid-term and final reports.

To decide where to publish your journal article, you may find the SHERPA/RoMEO service useful for a first orientation. This community-maintained site provides a listing of publishers' copyright conditions concerning authors archiving their work online. However, as journal policies change over time, it is important that you also check the detailed information on the journal website. The Directory of Open Access Journals provides useful information specifically on fully open access journals.

Research Data

The ERC is a supporter of responsible management of research data and other research outputs, in line with the FAIR principles (Findable, Accessible, Interoperable and Re-usable). FAIR research output management, including the management of research data, but also of other outputs such as software, algorithms, code, protocols or workflows, makes it possible to maximise the impact of frontier research. Open access to your research data and other outputs allows other researchers to build on your discoveries and to validate your results.

Requirements related to research data management are embedded in your ERC grant agreement. The exact requirements depend on the ERC Work Programme under which your grant was funded. Read more about how to prepare your Data Management Plan (DMP), deposit your research data and other outputs, and when to make them available through open access here:

Horizon 2020 (2014-2020)

Horizon 2020: What is required?

If you hold an ERC Frontier Research Grant (i.e. Starting Grant, Consolidator Grant, Advanced Grant or Synergy Grant) or Proof-of-Concept Grant funded under a Horizon 2020 ERC Work Programme, you must aim to deposit the research data needed to validate the results presented in your peer-reviewed scientific publications related to results from your project, at the same time as the publication. However, depositing research data is not a strict requirement.

In case you choose to participate in the Horizon 2020 Open Research Data Pilot, you need to manage the digital research data generated in the project as follows:

Deposit in a research data repository and take measures to make it possible for third parties to access, mine, exploit, reproduce and disseminate — free of charge for any user — the following:
the data, including associated metadata, needed to validate the results presented in scientific publications as soon as possible;
other data, including associated metadata, as specified in the data management plan.
Provide information — via the repository — about tools and instruments at the disposal of the beneficiaries and necessary for validating the results (and — where possible — provide the tools and instruments themselves).

You may decide not to provide open access to specific parts of your research data if the achievement of one of the action objectives, as described in Annex 1 of your grant agreement, would be jeopardised by making those specific parts of the research data openly accessible. In this case, the data management plan must contain the reasons for not giving access.
You may opt out of the Open Research Data Pilot at any stage, both before signing the grant agreement and afterwards (through an amendment to your grant agreement).

Horizon 2020: Step-by-step guide

Decide whether to opt in to or out of the Open Research Data Pilot (ORDP) when preparing your grant agreement

Option 1		Option 2
Decide to opt in to the ORDP when preparing your grant agreement Determine whether or not to make the Data Management Plan (DMP) publicly accessible via CORDIS		Decide to opt out of the ORDP when preparing your grant agreement

If you have opted in: Submit a DMP, which you can continuously update

Writing a DMP is directly linked to the methodology of your research. In other words, good research data management will make your work more efficient, contribute to safeguarding information and to increasing the impact and the value of the data among the beneficiaries and others, during and after the research.

The ERC proposes a DMP template, which you can download here. You are welcome to adapt it or use a different template, as long as you cover the FAIR principles and outline the allocation of resources as well as data security. Also elaborate when and why you will not give access to your research data.

If applicable, deposit your research data in a research data repository

Give open, free-of-charge access to the end-user to the digital research data generated during your project, as specified in your DMP

Horizon Europe (2021-2027)

Horizon Europe: What is required?

As an ERC grant holder funded under a Horizon Europe ERC Work Programme, you are required to:

Establish a data management plan (DMP) as a deliverable of the project within the first six months of your project and regularly update it. Note that no DMP is needed at the application stage. You may justify in your DMP why you may not be able to provide open access to some or all data generated in the project, following the principle ‘as open as possible as closed as necessary’. Acceptable reasons are in particular if providing open access would go against your legitimate interests, including regarding commercial exploitation, or if it would be contrary to any other constraints, in particular the EU competitive interests or your obligations under the grant agreement.
As soon as possible and within the deadlines set out in the DMP, deposit the data in a trusted repository.
Ensure open access to the deposited data as soon as possible and within the deadlines and conditions set out in the DMP, via the repository. Access has to be provided under a Creative Commons Attribution International Licence (CC BY) or a Creative Commons Public Domain Dedication (CC 0) or a licence/tool with equivalent rights, unless justified otherwise in your DMP.
Provide information via the repository about any research outputs or any other tools and instruments needed to re-use or validate the data.
The deposited research data must include detailed metadata that must be open under a Creative Common Public Domain Dedication (CC 0) or equivalent (to the extent legitimate interests or constraints are safeguarded), and must be in line with the FAIR principles (Findable, Accessible, Interoperable and Re-usable), in particular machine-actionable. You also need to provide information in the metadata at least about the following: datasets (description, date of deposit, author(s), venue and embargo); Horizon Europe funding; grant project name, acronym and number; licensing terms. The metadata also have to include persistent identifiers for the dataset (e.g. DOI), for the authors involved in the ERC-action (e.g. ORCIDs) and, if possible, for their organisations (e.g. ROR IDs) and the grant (e.g. Grant DOI). Where applicable, the metadata must include persistent identifiers for related publications and other research outputs.

You are encouraged to manage research outputs other than publications and research data also in line with the FAIR principles, to describe your efforts in the DMP and to deposit the outputs in a trusted repository. Other research outputs may include software, algorithms, code, protocols, workflows, among others.

If necessary, the ERC Scientific Officer who follows the progress of your project may contact you concerning your Data Management Plan. For FP7-funded ERC projects, there are no legal requirements linked to research data management, although the ERC strongly encourages you to follow best practice and provide access to your research data, to the extent possible.

Repositories

Read more for an overview of repositories in which you can deposit your scientific publications and/or research data, including several that the ERC Scientific Council has recommended. Next to repositories, you may find registries of repositories useful when considering where to deposit the outputs from your project. Note that the ERC Scientific Council has also issued an information document "Open Research Data and Data Management Plans" that you may find useful.

Types of repositories and some examples
Institutional	The purpose is to collect, disseminate and preserve digital research outputs of research organisations. Examples are the repositories of universities.
Domain-specific	The purpose is to collect, disseminate and preserve digital research outputs of specific research communities. Examples of repositories that have been recommended by the ERC Scientific Council: Europe PMC in the Life Sciences domain. ERC grantees can set up a free personalised PI account. To do so, first send an email to the Europe PMC helpdesk, providing your grant number and the title/acronym of your ERC-funded project, to request the addition of your grant to the Europe PMC grants database. Once this has been done, you can create a personalised PI account by following the instructions on the Europe PMC plus sign-up page. Europe PMC will display basic information on your ERC grant(s) and, if requested, on grants you have obtained from other funders of Europe PMC, providing added visibility to you and your work. If you have set up such an account, you can upload the publications related to your grant(s) that are not yet available in Europe PMC in full text due to publisher upload or deposition by co-authors. There is also an easy way to link articles in Europe PMC with an ORCID. arXiv in the Physics and Engineering domain. arXiv allows and encourage its users to link their arXiv author account with ORCID. OAPEN Library for books and chapters. The OAPEN Library contains freely accessible academic books, mainly in the area of Social Sciences and Humanities. OAPEN works with publishers to build a quality controlled collection of Open Access books, and provides services for publishers, libraries and research funders in the areas of dissemination, quality assurance and digital preservation. More information on the OAPEN Library and the services provided to ERC funded researchers can be found here. An example of a repository in the Humanities is the CORE repository of Humanities Commons.
General-purpose	The purpose is to provide researchers with the possibility to share, preserve and showcase research results (data and publications) even if there is no suitable domain-specific repository and they have no access to any institutional repository. Examples include: Zenodo, set up by CERN together with OpenAIRE Figshare HAL
Note that Academia.edu, ResearchGate and similar platforms, which require a subscription or a login account to access content, do not qualify as open access repositories. Personal websites and databases, publisher websites, as well as cloud storage services (Dropbox, Google Drive, etc.) are not considered repositories.

Directories and aggregators
Repositories for publications and/or data	Directory of Open Access Repositories (OpenDOAR: https://v2.sherpa.ac.uk/opendoar) Registry of Open Access Repositories (ROAR: roar.eprints.org) Registry of Research Data Repositories (re3data: https://www.re3data.org)
Journals	Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ: https://doaj.org)
Books	Directory of Open Access Books (DOAB: https://www.doabooks.org)
OpenAIRE	The Open Access Infrastructure for Research in Europe (OpenAIRE: https://www.openaire.eu) is an EU initiative funded and supported by the EU. OpenAIRE is an aggregator of deposited versions of publications and various other research outputs like datasets, to institutional and various other repositories and intends to link them to research and project information, datasets and author information.

Costs

You can allocate funds from your ERC grant to costs related to scientific publications and to storage and maintenance of research data generated by the ERC funded project.

When budgeting costs, make a first estimate of the fees you expect to incur for publications. It may be helpful to consider your target publication venues and the typical fees levied for the modality that would allow you to comply with the requirements of your grant agreement. You can flexibly adapt the budget for publications during your project, always within the granted overall budget.

The eligibility of costs differs based on the Framework Programme for research and innovation under which you obtained funding.

FP7 (ERC work programmes 2012-2013)

Costs for open access to scientific publications (including monographs and other books as well as book chapters) are eligible if incurred during the lifetime of the project and provided that they are in line with the general cost eligibility criteria. The requirements of the grant agreement must also be respected. Notably you must deposit the publication in a repository immediately upon publication, and make best efforts to provide open access to it via the repository at the latest within the foreseen embargo period.

Horizon 2020 (2014-2020)

Costs for open access to scientific publications (including monographs and other books as well as book chapters) and for research data management are eligible if incurred during the lifetime of the project and provided that they are in line with the general cost eligibility criteria. The requirements of the grant agreement must also be respected. Notably, you must deposit the publication in a repository immediately upon publication and provide open access to it via the repository at the latest within the foreseen embargo period.

Horizon Europe (2021-2027)

Publication fees in full open access venues (such as full open access journals, books, or platforms), including APCs, BPCs and other publishing fees (such as colour charges or page charges) are in principle eligible for reimbursement. The costs must be incurred during the lifetime of the grant and you must also comply with the other conditions of your grant agreement.

Note that fees for publications in hybrid or subscription journals are not eligible for reimbursement from your ERC grant. This includes so-called ‘transformative journals’, for which no exception applies. On the other hand, so-called ‘mirror journals’ or ‘sister journals’ of subscription journals are considered to be full open access journals; publication fees in such journals are in principle eligible for reimbursement. Transformative agreements may help you to publish in hybrid journals without having to worry about how to pay the related publishing costs.

Note that publication fees for books that are not fully open access (or for chapters in such books) are not eligible for reimbursement from your ERC grant. Publishing fees for open access books are in principle eligible to the extent that they cover the costs of the first open access digital edition. Printing fees for monographs and other books are NOT eligible.

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Open Science

Key Concepts

Open access

Research outputs

Repositories

Trusted repositories

Machine-readable / Machine-actionable information

Persistent Identifier (PID)

FAIR principles

Creative Commons licences

Publications: Key Concepts

Full open access publishing venues

Peer review

Research data: Key concepts

Digital Research Data

Scientific Publications

Research Data

Repositories

Institutional

Domain-specific

General-purpose

Costs