This page covers what is specific to EU-funded projects. For general open access guidance, consult the CERN OA Author Guide.
Horizon Europe requirements
Under Article 17 of the Horizon Europe Model Grant Agreement, beneficiaries must ensure immediate open access to all peer-reviewed publications relating to their results. The key obligations are:
- Deposit the published version or the Author Accepted Manuscript in a trusted repository at the time of publication. No embargo periods are permitted.
- License journal articles under CC-BY. For monographs, CC BY-NC or CC BY-ND are also acceptable.
- Metadata must be open under CC0 and include persistent identifiers for the publication, authors (e.g. ORCID) and grant. The publication itself must acknowledge the project name, acronym and grant number.
- Note on Read & Publish agreements: if your article is covered by a CERN agreement, the open access publication itself is taken care of but you must still ensure a compliant repository deposit with the required metadata (CC-BY licence, CC0 metadata, grant identifiers). The agreement alone does not satisfy all Horizon Europe obligations. CDS as CERN’s institutional repository does.
For projects still running under Horizon 2020, open access to peer-reviewed publications is mandatory but embargo periods are permitted and the licensing and metadata requirements are less prescriptive.
Paying for open access
Article publishing charges (APCs) are generally eligible costs under EU project budgets. Under Horizon Europe, however, APCs in hybrid journals are not eligible. Only fees in fully open access venues may be covered by the grant.
When publication costs can be covered by a grant, they should be. The central CERN OA fund does not cover APCs for articles where the costs are eligible under an external grant. If your article arises from an EU-funded project, the project budget is the correct funding source.
To simplify administration, SIS can handle the payment process and reallocate costs to the project budget at year end. Contact the OS Office early to arrange this.
Choosing a journal
The CERN OA Author Guide helps identify compliant journals. Most journals covered by SCOAP3 or CERN publisher agreements will also satisfy Horizon Europe requirements. For other journals, the Journal Checker Tool by cOAlition S is a useful reference (though designed for Plan S funders, not Horizon Europe directly). To evaluate less-known publishers, consult Think. Check. Submit.
Open Research Europe
Open Research Europe (ORE) is a diamond open access publishing platform, which means it is free of charge for both authors and readers. It uses post-publication open peer review. For CERN authors on EU-funded projects, ORE provides a compliant publication venue at no cost to the author or the project.
From autumn 2026, CERN will host and operate the new ORE platform, introducing a publish–review–curate model, supported by a consortium of European national funders and the European Commission. Authorship eligibility will expand beyond EU-funded researchers to include researchers from participating countries. More information: ore.eu
Research data
Horizon Europe also requires responsible management of research data in line with the FAIR principles, including a Data Management Plan and deposit in a trusted repository.
We are currently working on detailed guidance on this matter, but will publish it here as soon as possible.
Contact
For all questions: open-access-questions@cern.ch