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Open Access

Open Access requirements from public funders

Horizon Europe, the EU's research and innovation funding program for 2021-2027, requires Open Science practices to be assessed when a project is submitted. It distinguishes between mandatory and recommended practices - which are in any case evaluated and must be declined at the project presentation stage. 

Mandatory Open Science practices require immediate Open Access to peer-reviewed publications through the following methods:

  • Publish in a Gold/Diamond Open Access Journal and then deposit the final version or accepted manuscript, under a CC BY licence, without embargo, in a trusted repository; also monographs and long texts are included (for which other licences also apply, prohibiting commercial use and the creation of derivative works). It is mandatory to deposit even if authors already published their work in a Gold/Diamond Open Access journal.

Or

Or

  • Publish in a closed journal but maintain rights to deposit and to give immediate access to the final version or accepted manuscript (as mentioned above). Please note that only costs for publication in Gold Open Access journal are refundable.

In addition:

  • the outputs needed to validate the research results must be made available and linked via the repository to the publications.
  • the metadata - both descriptive and funding-related metadata - of the publications must be available in CC0.

In 2018 cOAlition S, a group of national research funding organizations, was born. The aim of this initiative, which incorporates the principles pursued by the Plan S project and acts in accordance with the European Commission and the European Research Council (ERC), is to promote the opening of research publications.

The cOAlition firmly established that, within cOAlition S entities participating in Plan S, from 2021

“all scholarly publications on the results from research funded by public or private grants provided by national, regional and international research councils and funding bodies, must be published in Open Access Journals, on Open Access Platforms, or made immediately available through Open Access Repositories without embargo.”

In Italy, Law 112/2013 already establishes Open Access as mandatory for publications resulting from projects at least 50 per cent publicly funded.

In 2022, in the context of the Programma nazionale per la ricerca (PNR), the Ministero dell’Università e della Ricerca (MUR) published the document Piano Nazionale per la Scienza Aperta (PNSA). One of the focal points of the document concerns Open Access to scientific publications.

Among its recommendations, there is the need for Open Access to articles and monographs to be included in all publicly funded calls. The path of transformative contracts is also recalled, and the Green Road is encouraged.

In addition, the Progetti di ricerca di Rilevante Interesse Nazionale (PRIN) programme is dedicated to funding public research projects.

The 2022 PRIN and the 2022 PRIN PNRR calls, reiterating what was stated in the previous call of 2017, indicate that Open Access to research results and the contents of peer-reviewed scientific publications within the project must be guaranteed by each unit manager.