Open Research Europe (ORE) is the European Commission’s no-fee, open-access publishing platform for researchers funded under Horizon 2020, Horizon Europe and Euratom. It publishes articles first and peer-reviews them openly afterwards, which lets grantees satisfy the Horizon Europe open access mandate immediately, without an embargo or an article processing charge. From autumn 2026, operation of the platform moves to CERN and eligibility widens beyond European Commission-funded authors for the first time.
Open Research Europe is an open-access publishing platform established in 2021 by the European Commission, built on a publish-review-curate model in which articles are made public before formal peer review begins.
- What is Open Research Europe?
- How does ORE satisfy the Horizon Europe open access mandate?
- Who can publish on ORE after the 2026 CERN transition?
- ORE vs a traditional journal: when should grantees use which?
- Answer-first Q&A
- What this means for research offices
What is Open Research Europe?
Open Research Europe is a dedicated, fee-free publishing venue for the outputs of EU-funded research. Articles go live shortly after an editorial pre-check for integrity and compliance, then undergo open, invited peer review — reviewer names, affiliations and reports are published alongside the work rather than kept confidential.
The platform accepts 14 article types across six discipline areas, including research articles, data notes, method articles, software tool articles, and — distinctively — null and negative results, which conventional journals routinely decline. Each review round produces a separate, individually citable version with its own DOI.
More than 1,200 articles from over 6,300 authors at more than 3,000 institutions worldwide had been published on ORE by March 2026, according to the European Commission’s Directorate-General for Research and Innovation (DG RTD).
How does ORE satisfy the Horizon Europe open access mandate?
Horizon Europe grant terms require beneficiaries to make peer-reviewed publications immediately open access, with no embargo period, under a CC-BY licence, and to manage underlying research data in line with FAIR principles. ORE is designed to meet all three requirements without extra administrative work by the author.
- Immediate access: articles publish before peer review completes, so there is no embargo window to manage.
- No cost barrier: the European Commission covers publication costs for eligible beneficiaries, removing the article processing charge (APC) that many gold open access journals require.
- CC-BY licensing: published articles carry a Creative Commons Attribution licence by default, satisfying Horizon Europe’s reuse requirements.
- FAIR data alignment: authors are expected to deposit supporting data in a trusted repository, and ORE’s open data policy is built around the FAIR (Findable, Accessible, Interoperable, Reusable) principles.
Because the European Commission operates the eligibility and compliance checks centrally, a grantee publishing on ORE does not need to separately verify licence terms or embargo settings the way they would with a mixed portfolio of subscription and hybrid journals.
Who can publish on ORE after the 2026 CERN transition?
Today, ORE eligibility is tied strictly to funding: at least one contributing author must be part of a running or completed Horizon 2020, Horizon Europe or Euratom-funded project. That restriction is changing. In December 2025, the CERN Council approved CERN as the new hosting and operating organisation for ORE, and CERN will run the platform’s technical and administrative infrastructure from autumn 2026 onward.
The new phase turns ORE from a single-funder platform into a consortium effort. A funding consortium of national research funders and organisations from Austria, France, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, Norway, Portugal, Slovenia, Spain, Sweden and Switzerland joins the European Commission, which continues as a permanent observer and financial contributor. Governance sits with a Funders’ Group, supported by an Executive Committee and a Scientific Advisory Board (nominations for which opened 10 June 2026).
Two operational details matter for grant administrators tracking this shift:
- Since its 2021 launch, ORE has run on F1000’s open-research publishing infrastructure (part of Taylor & Francis); from autumn 2026 the platform moves to CERN-hosted infrastructure built on the open-source Open Journal Systems (OJS) software.
- Publishing remains completely free of author-facing fees both for European Commission-funded researchers and for authors affiliated with institutions in the consortium’s participating countries — the current platform stays operational until autumn 2026 for ongoing submissions.
ORE vs a traditional journal: when should grantees use which?
ORE is the fastest, cheapest route to Horizon Europe open access compliance, but it is not a universal substitute for every publication decision. The table below sets out the practical differences a grantee should weigh before choosing a venue.
| Factor | Open Research Europe | Typical gold/hybrid journal |
|---|---|---|
| Cost to author | Free — covered by the EC or consortium funder | APC often £1,500–£4,000+, or subscription paywall |
| Peer review timing | Open, after publication | Closed, before publication |
| Eligibility | Horizon 2020/Europe/Euratom beneficiaries; widening to 11 consortium countries from autumn 2026 | Open to any author who pays or has a qualifying subscription |
| Article types accepted | 14 types, incl. null/negative results, data notes, software tools | Usually limited to research articles and reviews |
| Indexing status | Google Scholar on publication; Scopus and Inspec after peer review passes | Varies by title; established journals often carry longer indexing history |
| Impact metric | No Journal Impact Factor; article-level metrics, DORA/Leiden Manifesto-aligned | Journal Impact Factor commonly available |
Grantees should favour ORE when the priority is fast, mandate-compliant, no-cost open access — particularly for data notes, methods papers, or negative results that a conventional journal would reject. A traditional journal route remains preferable where a field’s tenure or promotion norms still weight Journal Impact Factor heavily, or where a non-Horizon co-funder specifies a different compliant venue.
Answer-first Q&A
What is Open Research Europe?
Open Research Europe is the European Commission’s open-access publishing platform for researchers funded by EU programmes, launched in 2021. It uses open, post-publication peer review and, from autumn 2026, is jointly operated by CERN and a consortium of national research funders.
Is Open Research Europe indexed in Scopus?
Yes, conditionally. Every ORE article appears in Google Scholar immediately on publication. Once an article passes open peer review, it becomes discoverable in Scopus and Inspec as well, per LIBER Europe’s published FAQ on the platform.
Can UK-funded researchers publish on Open Research Europe?
Yes. Since the UK re-associated to Horizon Europe in 2024, UK-based researchers named on an eligible Horizon Europe, Horizon 2020 or Euratom grant retain the same fee-free publishing eligibility on ORE as researchers anywhere else in the programme.
What this means for research offices
Research administration teams should note one operational wrinkle: ORE’s open peer-review process generates multiple article versions, each with its own DOI. LIBER Europe’s guidance warns that repositories harvesting all versions — rather than just the latest — risk having duplicate-detection systems mistakenly flag or remove legitimate records.
Institutions should update repository ingestion rules and internal open access guidance to reflect the 2026 eligibility expansion, and confirm with their research administration teams which national funders now sit inside the ORE consortium before advising grantees on venue choice.
The CERN-hosted, multi-funder version of ORE launching in autumn 2026 is a concrete step toward the diamond open access model set out in Science Europe’s 2022 Action Plan for Diamond Open Access — a model likely to shape how Horizon Europe’s successor programme frames open access requirements after 2027.
