The European Commission has launched a platform for open-access, peer-reviewed, and no-cost publications from HORIZON 2020 and HORIZON EUROPE projects named Open Research Europe. Publications comprise among others scientific articles, data papers and research data. 

Publications will be submitted to a peer review process similar to the procedures of the F1000 open access publisher. This means: a publication is prepared according to the guidelines and submitted by the author(s) to Open Research Europe. Then the publication will be reviewed with respect to formal aspects and will be published promptly. (There is no longer an embargo period for publications that have undergone a peer review process.) The publication initiates a peer review process in which the names of the reviewers and their reviews are published alongside the article.

Open access publication will be fast and no costs will incur.

Still, all other means of open access publication (golden or green way) are possible and costs are usually covered by the project as long as they are incurred within the HORIZON 2020 project duration.

Open Access in Horizon 2020

• Publications that have undergone a peer review process must be made available in OA.
• Article Fees (APC) are eligible project costs as publication costs, provided they are incurred during the project duration.
• Publications in the golden path of OA must also be made accessible in a scientific repository.
• For publications in the green path of OA, the embargo period of the publisher must not exceed 6 months (or 12 months for social sciences and humanities).
• Publishing conditions of the publishers must be clarified in advance by the researchers.
  
  

Open Research Data in Horizon 2020

Research data is understood to be Information, especially in digital form and as facts or figures that are collected and used as a basis for conclusions, discussions or calculations. This includes:

• Statistics
• Experimental results
• Measurements
• Field observations
• Survey results
• Interview recordings
• Pictures.

In the context of Open Science, the European Commission supports open access to research data. The principle applies: "As open as possible, as closed as necessary".

The European Commission provides the Open Research Data Pilot (ORD Pilot), which has two main pillars:

• The development of a Data Management Plan (DMP) and
• the most open access possible to research data.

The European Commission's Open Research Data Pilot allows OA to access and re-use research data generated by Horizon 2020 projects. The ORD Pilot concerns the following data types:

• "underlying data" (the data needed to validate the results presented in scientific publications) as soon as they are available, including the associated metadata (i.e. metadata describing the research data stored)
• all other data (e.g. curated data that cannot be directly attributed to a publication or raw data), including associated metadata, by the deadlines specified by the project/grantee in the DMP.

The Data Management Plan (DMP) describes how collected and generated research data will be handled during and after the project duration. It also describes which data have been collected/generated, according to which methodology and which standards, whether and how these data will be disseminated and/or made public ("open") and finally how they will be curated and stored (also after the end of the project).

Template for the structure of the DMP
1. Data Summary
2. FAIR Data FAIR Data (Findablility, Accesbility, Interoperability und Reusability)
2.1 Making Data Findable, Including Provisions for Metadata
2.2 Making Data Openly Accessible
2.3 Making Data Interoperable
2.4 Increase Data Re-use (through Clarifying Licenses)
3. Allocation of resources
4. Data security
5. Ethical aspects
6. Other

Further Information: "Guidelines on FAIR Data Management in Horizon 2020"

From Horizon 2020 Work Programme 2017 onwards, all projects will initially automatically participate in the ORD Pilot (with the exception of ERC Proof of Concept, SME Instrument Phase 1, ERA-NET Cofund measures where no data are generated, EJP Cofund and Prices). It is possible to opt out.