Horizon Europe Article 39 (Open Access)

Article 39 of Regulation (EU) 2021/695, the Horizon Europe framework regulation, is the legal provision that creates the programme's binding open science obligations for grant beneficiaries. It has two strands: (1) mandatory immediate open access to peer-reviewed scientific publications resulting from Horizon Europe funding, with no embargo period, licensed under the latest version of Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) or an equivalent licence (a narrower exception permits CC BY-NC or CC BY-ND for monographs and other long-form outputs); and (2) responsible management of research data under the FAIR principles and the default that data should be 'as open as possible, as closed as necessary,' subject to documented, justified exceptions for IP, personal data, confidentiality, or security. Horizon Europe Grant Agreements incorporate both strands as binding funding conditions, not discretionary guidance.

ByCASRAI Editorial Board

· Last updated 18 Jul 2026

Worked examples

Is an instance

A Horizon Europe beneficiary deposits the peer-reviewed author-accepted manuscript of a journal article in an institutional or subject repository on the date of publication, under a CC BY 4.0 licence, with no embargo, satisfying the publications strand of Article 39 even though the journal itself is subscription-access.

Is an instance

A Horizon Europe consortium documents in its Data Management Plan why a dataset containing patient-level clinical trial data will remain access-restricted rather than openly published, citing data protection obligations under the GDPR as the justification required by the "as open as possible, as closed as necessary" principle.

Looks similar, but isn't

Not an instance

A Horizon Europe beneficiary publishes a standard peer-reviewed research article gold open access (free to read on publication) but under an "all rights reserved" licence with no CC BY or equivalent grant of reuse rights -- free-to-read alone does not satisfy Article 39's licensing requirement.

What Article 39 actually requires

Article 39 of Regulation (EU) 2021/695 — the framework regulation that establishes Horizon Europe, the EU’s 2021–2027 research and innovation programme — is the specific legal text that creates the programme’s open science obligations for grant beneficiaries. It is not a policy preference or a recommendation in the Horizon Europe Programme Guide; it is a condition written into the regulation itself, and Horizon Europe Grant Agreements incorporate it as a binding obligation of funding. Article 39 has two distinct strands that are often conflated but function differently: an open-access mandate for peer-reviewed scientific publications, and a research-data management obligation built around the FAIR principles. Confusing the two matters in practice, because they carry different requirements, different exceptions, and different compliance checks.

The publications strand: immediate open access, no embargo, CC BY

For peer-reviewed scientific publications resulting from Horizon Europe-funded work, beneficiaries must ensure open access to the publication at the point of publication — with no embargo period — and license it under the latest available version of the Creative Commons Attribution licence (CC BY) or an equivalent licence granting the same rights. This is a materially stricter position than the older, more common model of a green open access deposit with a 6- or 12-month embargo, which is how many funder open-access policies (including Horizon Europe’s own predecessor, Horizon 2020) historically operated. Under the current Horizon Europe model grant agreement, immediate is immediate: there is no permitted delay window for the publication itself, though beneficiaries retain some flexibility in edge cases such as monographs and other long-form outputs, where a more restrictive licence variant (e.g. CC BY-NC or CC BY-ND, excluding commercial use or derivative works) is permitted.

The obligation attaches to the beneficiary, not the publisher, and is independent of whichever gold, green, or diamond open-access route a given journal or platform offers — a beneficiary publishing in a subscription (non-OA) venue must still make a compliant copy (typically the peer-reviewed author-accepted manuscript, at minimum) openly available immediately, commonly via deposit in a trusted repository, to satisfy Article 39, regardless of that journal’s own embargo policy.

The data strand: FAIR and “as open as possible, as closed as necessary”

Separately, Article 39 requires responsible management of research data in line with the FAIR principles — findable, accessible, interoperable, and reusable — and sets a default expectation that research data should be as open as possible, as closed as necessary. That default is explicitly qualified, not absolute: beneficiaries may restrict access to data where openness would conflict with legitimate interests, including intellectual property or commercialization plans, personal data protection obligations, confidentiality, security concerns, or other legal constraints, provided the restriction is documented and justified rather than simply left unaddressed. Data being closed for a legitimate, documented reason does not mean it fails to be FAIR — findability, interoperability, and conditional accessibility can still be satisfied for data that is not unconditionally open.

How this differs from the Horizon Europe FAIR Data Management Plan requirement

CASRAI’s Horizon Europe FAIR Data Management Plan guide covers the practical DMP mechanics — the required sub-headings, submission timing, and template structure — that operationalize Article 39’s data strand. Article 39 is the underlying legal source of that obligation; the DMP is the compliance artifact a beneficiary produces to satisfy it. The publications strand of Article 39 (immediate open access, no embargo, CC BY licensing) is a separate obligation with its own compliance path — typically deposit in a trusted repository at or before publication — and is not satisfied by DMP submission. A project can have a fully compliant DMP and still be non-compliant with Article 39 if a peer-reviewed output is published behind a paywall with a standard embargo and no compliant open deposit.

Worked example

A Horizon Europe-funded consortium publishes a peer-reviewed journal article in a subscription (non-OA) journal whose standard policy is a 12-month embargo on the author-accepted manuscript. To comply with Article 39, the beneficiary must additionally deposit a copy of the peer-reviewed manuscript (or the published version, if permitted) in a trusted repository, made openly accessible immediately upon publication under a CC BY licence — the journal’s own embargo does not override the funder mandate, and the beneficiary, not the publisher, carries the compliance obligation.

Counter-example

A Horizon Europe beneficiary publishes in a fully gold open-access journal that makes the article freely readable on publication but licenses it under a restrictive “all rights reserved” or CC BY-NC-ND term for a standard peer-reviewed research article (not a monograph). Free-to-read is not, by itself, Article 39 compliance — the licensing requirement (CC BY or equivalent, absent the narrow long-form exception) is a separate condition from the accessibility requirement, and a publication that is readable but not appropriately licensed does not satisfy Article 39.

Related terms

Use in your systems

JATS XML <role> element

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Schema.org DefinedTerm (JSON-LD)

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