EC promotes Open Access as part of €15 billion Horizon 2020 fund

This week the European Commission outlined its support for Open Access (OA) as part of its Horizon 2020 fund launch.  Worth more than €15 billion over the first two years, the funding is intended to help boost Europe’s knowledge-driven economy, and tackle issues that will make a difference in people’s lives.

The Horizon 2020 model agreement (p.58, Section 29.2) requires researchers to ensure open access (free of charge, online access for any user) to all peer-reviewed scientific publications.  Researchers must either:-

  1. deposit an electronic copy of the published version or final peer-reviewed manuscript in a repository e.g. BURO (Green OA)
  2. ensure open access — via the repository — to the bibliographic metadata that identifies the deposited publication on a publisher website (Gold OA)

There is also a useful Open Access Factsheet which summarises expectations for Green and Gold Open Access and suggests that there will be some kind of mechanism for paying some of the Article Processing Costs (APCs) incurred after the end of a grant.

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