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Guides

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Guidelines for publications

  • Make all research publications relevant to the outbreak immediately available, through deposition of a copy of the published, or final, peer-reviewed version, in a repository (through which open access to the deposited copy shall be ensured), at the latest at the time of publication, under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International Public License (CC BY 4.0) or a license with equivalent rights.
  • Make research findings available via preprint servers before journal publication, or via platforms that make publications openly accessible before peer-review. Include clear statements regarding the availability of underlying data. Some reliable and currently very relevant preprint archives are bioRxiv (life sciences), medRxiv (medical), PsyArxiv (behavioural sciences), SocArXiv (social sciences), ArXiv (o.a. physics, mathematics, computer science) and Open Science Framework (OSF) preprints or Zenodo (the latter two are multidisciplinary archives).
  • Provide information via the repository about any research output or any other tools and instruments needed to re-use and/or validate the conclusions of the scientific publication. This includes for example software, workflows, models, materials etc. If possible, provide access to the tools or instruments themselves.
  • Include metadata of deposited publications under a Creative Commons Public Domain Dedication (CC 0 1.0) or equivalent, in line with the FAIR principles (in particular machine actionable) and provide information at least about the following:
    • Publication: author(s), title, date of publication, publication venue;
    • Framework Programme and the action: the terms "European Union” (EU) and "Horizon Europe" or “Euratom”, respectively, the name of the action, acronym, grant number;
    • Licensing terms;
    • Persistent identifiers for the publication (e.g. DOI or Handle), the author(s) (e.g. ORCID, ResearcherID), and, if possible, for the institution(s) (e.g. ROR) and the grant (e.g. DOI) covered by this agreement;
    • Where applicable, persistent identifiers for any research output or any other tools and instruments needed to validate the conclusions of the publication.
Source:  Horizon 2020 projects working on the 2019 coronavirus disease (COVID-19), the severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2), and related topics: Guidelines for open access to publications, data and other research outputs

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You are not restricted as to where to publish. You may publish in open access journals, or in journals that sell subscriptions. Hybrid journals are also fine, these offer the possibility of making individual articles openly available.

In the case of Article Processing Charges (APCs), you are eligible for reimbursement during the duration of the project. But you should include costs for open access publishing in the budget of your project proposal.

You can avoid APC’s! Making your research open access does not have to cost anything. By depositing your articles in a repository or finding an open access journal that does not charge APCs, you can provide open access for free.

 Did you know?
The Budget for Publications = Average APC x number of publications. 

Look at these methods:

  • Method 1: Average APC based on list of journals used by the consortium (look up prices at publisher website and/or consult a librarian).
  • Method 2: Average APC based on general market figures. Björk & Solomon (2014) estimated the average price of Article Processing Charges (APC) for established OA journals at ca. 1,020 EUR and for hybrid journals (subscription journal with OA option for individual articles) at ca. 1,980 EUR. More recently, the Open APC initiative, that releases datasets on fees paid for OA journal articles by universities and research institutions under an open database license in Github, estimates the average payment for fully OA journals at 1,484 EUR, whereas for hybrid journals the average fee is 2,492 EUR.

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  • Immediately if you have published in an open access journal
  • Within six months of publication (12 months for publications in the social sciences and humanities) in any other case.

Check your publisher’s policy to determine which version you can upload and if an embargo period applies, see the Sherpa/Romeo database.

An embargo period of six months (or 12 months for the social sciences and humanities) is acceptable.

If the publisher’s policy differs from the Horizon 2020 requirements, contact the publisher. You are requested to inform the publisher of the open access requirements, and ask for an exception to the publisher’s policy to enable you to meet those requirements. It is important to obtain this permission in writing. Use a Template letter (.pdf) provided by the European Commission when writing to the publisher asking for an amendment to your publishing agreement.

 Did you know?
You are also required to provide access to your accompanying research data. See our Guide to Open Access to Data in H2020.

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You can use a repository for scientific publications of your choice:

  • your institutional repository, OR
  • a subject-based/thematic repository (e.g., arXiv, Europe PMC), OR
  • Zenodo the OpenAIRE repository hosted by CERN.

OpenAIRE can also helps you to find the appropriate repository. Find here.

 Did you know?
Other types of scientific publications (non peer-reviewed articles, monographs, conference proceedings, reports, …) are not covered by the mandate, but good practice to make them open as well!

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