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Publications funded in whole or in part by Horizon 2020 grants must meet the Horizon 2020 open access requirements. Find out how to comply, and what funding is available.
The Horizon 2020 open access policy applies to peer-reviewed scientific publications supported in whole or in part by these grants. This includes ERC calls for funding under the Horizon 2020 ERC Work Programme.
Peer-reviewed journal articles must be deposited in a repository on or before publication, and made open access within six months of publication (12 months for outputs in social sciences and humanities). Grant holders are strongly encouraged to make monographs and other research publications open access.
There is more information in the following guides:
- Horizon 2020 open access guidelines
- Horizon 2020 factsheet for researchers
- Horizon 2020 factsheet for research administrators
- ERC open access guidelines
The Horizon 2020 open access guidelines (page 7) require you to include specific information when you deposit in a repository.
Complying with the policy
Gold open access
- Journals in UCL's transformative agreements are compliant. To use the agreements, the article's corresponding author must be at UCL. Proceed with submission, following the links to publisher instructions in the list of journals in UCL's agreements, and choose CC BY when accepted for publication.
- Fully open access journals listed in the Directory of Open Access Journals are compliant. Some fully open access journals are included in UCL's agreements (see above). If your journal is not included in an agreement, it may be eligible for funding via UCL's Open Access Team if it also acknowledges UCL-held Wellcome Trust, UK Research Council (UKRI), CRUK and/or BHF funds.
Gold open access costs for articles in other fully open access journals can be paid from Horizon 2020 grants, provided they are incurred during the duration of the project. The Open Research Europe platform is available to authors during and after the end of their grants.
You also need to upload the paper to UCL's Research Publications Service (RPS), or deposit in a repository such as Europe PMC, arXiv or Zenodo, in order to meet the Horizon 2020 requirements.
Green open access
UCL's updated Publications Policy allows authors publishing in subscription journals not in UCL's transformative agreements to make their articles open access in UCL Discovery and Europe PMC without an embargo, under the Creative Commons Attribution licence (CC BY). Follow the steps on our UCL Publications Policy: actions for authors page, adding a rights retention statement to your paper when you submit, and uploading your accepted manuscript to RPS on or before publication. You also need to upload the accepted mansucript to Europe PMC, with a 0 embargo. See the UCL Publications Policy support pages for more information.
If you have any queries about rights retention or your journal's policy, or if your journal refuses to allow you to apply the CC BY licence to your accepted manuscript, contact UCL's Open Access Team for advice. Your article can meet the Horizon 2020 open access requirements provided that the journal's embargo on Green open access is no longer than six months (12 months for outputs in social sciences and humanities).