CASRAI Dictionary

Tag: horizon europe open access policy

  • Horizon Europe Open Access Policy: Gold vs Green

    Under Horizon Europe, gold open access lets grantees claim Article Processing Charges (APCs) as an eligible cost when publishing in a fully open access journal, while green open access requires no APC but demands immediate deposit of the accepted manuscript in a repository — Horizon Europe permits no embargo period on either route. The route chosen changes what a grant can reimburse, not whether the underlying obligation to provide open access is met.

    Horizon Europe open access policy is the European Commission’s mandate, set out in the Horizon Europe Model Grant Agreement, requiring immediate open access to peer-reviewed publications arising from EU-funded research, with no embargo and a Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) licence as the default. This article resolves the specific pre-award question research administrators and principal investigators raise most often: which route — gold or green — is cheaper, faster to budget, and lower-risk to comply with.

    What does the gold open access route require and cost?

    Gold open access means publishing the final version of record directly in a journal or platform that is open access from the moment of publication. Under Horizon Europe, APCs for publishing in a fully open access journal are an eligible cost and can be charged to the grant budget, provided the journal is genuinely open access rather than a subscription title offering a paid open option.

    The European Commission’s Horizon Europe Annotated Grant Agreement draws a firm line here: APCs paid to hybrid journals — subscription journals that unlock a single article for a fee — are not an eligible cost unless the journal is covered by an institutional transformative agreement the funder recognises. Grantees who publish gold must still deposit a copy of the final published version, and its metadata, in a trusted repository at the time of publication; paying the APC does not remove the deposit obligation.

    A cost-free variant of the gold route exists: Open Research Europe (ORE), the European Commission’s own peer-reviewed publishing platform for Horizon Europe and Euratom beneficiaries. ORE carries no APC for eligible authors, publishes under CC BY, and satisfies the immediate-access requirement without a grant budget line at all.

    What does the green open access route require, and is there really no embargo?

    Green open access means publishing as normal — including in subscription or hybrid journals — and separately depositing a copy of the work in a trusted repository so readers can access it without a subscription. Because no APC is typically paid, the green route carries no direct cost to reimburse, which is its main budgetary appeal.

    The compliance burden shifts instead to timing and rights. Horizon Europe’s Model Grant Agreement requires the author’s accepted manuscript (AAM) — the final peer-reviewed text before typesetting — to be deposited and made publicly accessible immediately on publication, with no embargo permitted. This is stricter than many national funder policies, several of which still allow embargoes of six to twelve months for the green route. Grantees must also apply a CC BY licence to the deposited manuscript, which means notifying the publisher of their funder obligations at submission, since standard subscription-journal copyright transfer agreements do not grant this right automatically.

    Retaining the necessary rights is the single most common green-route compliance failure. Institutions increasingly rely on rights-retention strategies — asserting a CC BY licence on the AAM ahead of acceptance — to avoid publisher pushback after the fact.

    Gold vs green: how APC reimbursement actually differs

    The financial and compliance trade-offs are distinct enough that they warrant a direct route-by-route comparison rather than treating “open access compliance” as one undifferentiated obligation.

    Factor Gold open access Green open access
    APC reimbursement Eligible for fully open access journals and platforms; must be budgeted in the grant Not applicable — no APC in most cases
    Hybrid-journal APCs Not eligible, unless covered by a recognised transformative agreement Not relevant — publish anywhere, then self-archive
    Embargo allowed Not applicable — immediate by definition None permitted under Horizon Europe
    Version deposited Final published version (Version of Record) Author’s Accepted Manuscript
    Licence required CC BY (CC BY-NC/ND permitted for monographs) CC BY on the deposited manuscript
    Zero-cost option Open Research Europe (no APC) Always zero-cost by design

    For grant budgeting, this comparison has one practical consequence: a grantee who assumes any APC is reimbursable, or that green deposit can wait for a standard embargo, will fall out of compliance. Horizon Europe’s no-embargo rule on green deposit is stricter than UKRI’s REF-era transitional allowances and than several national mandates still permitting embargoes — a distinction that trips up researchers moving from a previous funder’s rules onto a Horizon Europe grant.

    Common questions on Horizon Europe open access requirements

    What are the open access requirements for Horizon Europe?

    Horizon Europe requires all peer-reviewed scientific publications resulting from funded work to be made immediately open access, with no embargo, under a CC BY licence (or CC BY-NC/ND for monographs). This applies whether the grantee chooses the gold or green route, and a repository deposit is required in both cases.

    What is the European Commission’s open access policy under Horizon Europe?

    The Commission’s policy treats open access as the default expected outcome of publicly funded research, not an optional extra. It requires immediate access, open licensing, and open metadata, and extends beyond publications to FAIR research data underpinning them, governed by the grant’s Data Management Plan.

    Is open access always free for the author?

    No. Gold open access typically involves an APC, which Horizon Europe treats as an eligible grant cost only for fully open access venues. Green open access is generally free, since it relies on self-archiving rather than a publication fee, making it the lower-cost default where budget is constrained.

    What is an open access policy, in funder terms?

    An open access policy is a funder’s binding condition that research outputs be made freely accessible and reusable, typically specifying the timing (immediate vs embargoed), licence type, and eligible cost treatment. Horizon Europe’s version is among the strictest in Europe because it removes the embargo option entirely.

    What this means for grant budgeting and compliance teams

    Research offices preparing a Horizon Europe proposal should budget APCs only against fully open access venues or confirmed transformative agreements, and should not assume hybrid-journal costs will be reimbursed. Where budget certainty matters more than journal choice, green open access or Open Research Europe removes APC risk entirely while still meeting the immediate-access mandate.

    Compliance teams should build rights-retention language into author guidance before submission, not after acceptance, since the no-embargo rule leaves no room to negotiate access timing with a publisher post hoc. Institutional repository workflows that trigger deposit reminders at the point of acceptance — rather than publication — reduce the risk of missing the immediate-deposit requirement.

    As the European Commission continues to expand Open Research Europe’s remit and cOAlition S partners refine rights-retention model policies, the practical gap between the two routes is likely to narrow further on cost but remain wide on process — gold trades money for simplicity, green trades cost for rights-management discipline.

  • Open Research Europe: 2026 Grantee Guide

    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?

    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.

  • Widening Participation in Horizon Europe: A Practical Guide for New Institutions

    Widening Participation is Horizon Europe’s dedicated equity mechanism, channelling funding through instruments such as Teaming, Twinning and ERA Chairs to 15 lower-performing “Widening countries” plus qualifying Associated Countries. Every project funded under these instruments — like every other Horizon Europe grant — is bound by the same immediate open access and FAIR data obligations, which means institutions with the least administrative capacity face the same compliance bar as long-established research offices.

    Widening Participation and Strengthening the European Research Area (WIDERA) is Horizon Europe’s fourth “transversal” element, sitting alongside the programme’s three main pillars. Its purpose is definitional: WIDERA exists to close the research and innovation performance gap between EU member states, not to relax the rules that apply once funding is awarded.

    What is Widening Participation in Horizon Europe?

    Widening Participation and Spreading Excellence is the set of Horizon Europe actions that build research and innovation capacity in countries whose institutions have historically won a disproportionately small share of competitive EU funding. According to the European Commission’s Research and Innovation portal, Widening countries accounted for just 5.1% of the total Horizon 2020 budget as of February 2021 — up from 4.2% under the Seventh Framework Programme (FP7) and 4.8% in 2018, a slow but measurable trend the current work programme is designed to accelerate.

    WIDERA is not a side grant scheme. It is a structural correction mechanism embedded in the same legal and reporting framework as every other Horizon Europe action, including its Open Science obligations.

    Which countries and instruments does Widening Participation cover?

    Under the Horizon Europe Regulation, the 15 Widening countries are Bulgaria, Croatia, Cyprus, Czechia, Estonia, Greece, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Malta, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Slovakia and Slovenia. Associated Countries with equivalent research and innovation performance characteristics, plus the EU’s Outermost Regions, are also eligible. The UK is not a Widening country — but as a Horizon Europe Associated Country since 1 January 2024, UK-based institutions remain eligible as project partners in most Widening actions, even where only Widening-country institutions can act as coordinators.

    Three instruments do most of the equity-building work:

    Instrument Purpose Coordinator eligibility
    Teaming for Excellence Creates or modernises centres of excellence in Widening countries via strategic partnership with a leading institution abroad Widening-country institution, conditional on securing complementary structural-fund investment
    Twinning Links a Widening-country institution with at least two top-class counterparts in different EU or Associated Countries for networking and knowledge transfer Widening-country institution acts as coordinator
    ERA Chairs Attracts a high-level researcher to a Widening university or research centre and integrates a new research team into that institution Widening-country institution hosts the chair

    The 2026-2027 work programme adds further routes, including the European Excellence Initiative, Pathways to Synergies, the Dissemination and Exploitation Support Facility, the Hop-on Facility, Excellence Hubs and ERA Talents — each aimed at a different stage of institutional capacity-building.

    How do open access and open data requirements apply to Widening countries?

    Horizon Europe’s Open Science policy applies uniformly: there is no reduced-compliance track for Widening-country grantees. Every beneficiary must provide immediate open access to peer-reviewed publications, with no embargo period, deposited as a machine-readable copy in a trusted repository and licensed under Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) or an equivalent open licence.

    Research data falls under the same expectation of being findable, accessible, interoperable and reusable (FAIR), consistent with the standards this site tracks elsewhere in its research-data vocabulary. The practical consequence for a widening-country institution is that open access compliance capacity — repository infrastructure, licensing know-how, data management planning — has to exist from day one of a grant, not be built up over a project’s lifetime.

    • No embargo is permitted on peer-reviewed outputs, regardless of an institution’s prior publishing infrastructure.
    • CC BY (or equivalent) licensing must be agreed before submission, not retrofitted after acceptance.
    • Data management plans are a deliverable, assessed on the same timetable as for established research-intensive universities.

    Building compliance capacity from scratch

    Institutions applying for Teaming, Twinning or ERA Chairs funding for the first time typically lack a dedicated open access office, an institutional repository, or staff experienced in Horizon Europe’s grant agreement terms. The European Commission has built dedicated support around exactly this gap rather than leaving it to individual institutions.

    Three support channels are worth prioritising early in a widening-country institution’s planning:

    • NCP_WIDERA.NET — the network of National Contact Points that provides free guidance on eligibility, proposal writing and reporting requirements specific to Widening actions.
    • The Dissemination and Exploitation Support Facility — free-of-charge expert support to help Widening-country beneficiaries meet dissemination obligations, including open access planning.
    • The Hop-on Facility — allows a Widening-country institution to join an already-running Horizon Europe Pillar 2 or EIC Pathfinder consortium, gaining compliance experience without having to coordinate a new proposal.

    For research administrators building this capability, mapping open science obligations against institutional workflow — who owns the repository deposit step, who signs off the data management plan, who tracks embargo-free publication dates — is the highest-leverage early task. Framing this against the broader discipline of research administration practice, rather than treating it as a one-off grant condition, is what allows the capacity to outlast any single Teaming or Twinning project.

    Widening Participation: frequently asked questions

    What are the widening countries in Horizon Europe?

    The 15 Widening countries defined in the Horizon Europe Regulation are Bulgaria, Croatia, Cyprus, Czechia, Estonia, Greece, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Malta, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Slovakia and Slovenia. Associated Countries with comparable research performance, and the EU’s Outermost Regions, are also eligible for Widening actions.

    Is the EUI Widening Europe Programme the same as Horizon Europe’s WIDERA?

    No. The European University Institute’s Widening Europe Programme is a separate, institution-level initiative supporting scholars from Widening countries. Horizon Europe’s WIDERA is the EU-wide funding mechanism behind Teaming, Twinning and ERA Chairs; the two are complementary but administratively distinct.

    What this means for the 2026-2027 work programme

    The European Commission published the WIDERA Work Programme 2026-2027 on 11 December 2025, confirming that Teaming, Twinning and ERA Chairs continue as core instruments alongside the newer capacity-building routes. For institutions in widening countries, the equity mandate and the open science mandate are not competing priorities — they are the same compliance obligation, assessed on the same grant agreement. Building repository infrastructure, licensing literacy and data management capability now, rather than reactively per project, is what determines whether a widening-country institution can convert a single Teaming or ERA Chairs award into a durable research administration function.

  • Horizon Europe Work Programme 2026-2027 Guide: Open Access and FAIR Data Changes

    Horizon Europe Work Programme 2026-2027 keeps the core open science mandate intact — immediate open access, FAIR data and a Data Management Plan for every project that produces data — while cutting call topics by 35%, expanding lump-sum funding to roughly half of all calls, and introducing new cross-cluster “horizontal calls”. For grant offices, the compliance clauses have not moved; the surrounding administrative machinery has.

    The Horizon Europe Work Programme 2026-2027 is the European Commission’s final two-year implementation plan for the 2021-2027 Horizon Europe framework, published in December 2025 and covering all funding calls, budgets and eligibility rules through the end of the programme.

    What changed in the Horizon Europe Work Programme 2026-2027?

    The European Commission adopted the Horizon Europe Work Programme 2026-2027 on 12 December 2025, according to the European Health and Digital Executive Agency (HaDEA). The Commission committed over €14 billion across the 2026 and 2027 calls, spanning all three Pillars, the Missions, Widening Participation and Strengthening the European Research Area (WIDERA), and the New European Bauhaus Facility, as confirmed by Innovate UK Business Connect’s summary of the published documents.

    The headline structural change is scale: the Commission’s General Introduction to the 2026-2027 Work Programme states that the number of topics across Pillar 2’s collaborative research Clusters was cut by 35% compared with the 2023-2024 Work Programme, a reduction also reported independently by Science|Business and EMDESK. Fewer, broader topics replace the previous highly prescriptive call texts.

    Dimension Work Programme 2023-2025 Work Programme 2026-2027
    Pillar 2 call topics Baseline count 35% fewer topics
    Lump-sum funding share Partial, growing Approx. 50% of all calls
    Open access mandate Immediate OA, CC BY, no embargo Unchanged
    FAIR data / DMP requirement Mandatory; “as open as possible, as closed as necessary” Unchanged; EOSC integration reinforced
    Cross-cluster “horizontal calls” Not used Introduced (e.g. Clean Industrial Deal, AI in science)
    Committed budget signalled — Over €14 billion

    Open access to publications: what’s the same, what’s different

    Nothing has changed in the core publication mandate. Under the Horizon Europe Model Grant Agreement, beneficiaries must ensure immediate open access to peer-reviewed publications reporting funded results, with no embargo period, deposit in a trusted repository, and a licence — typically Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) or equivalent — that permits reuse, redistribution and text and data mining.

    What grant offices should actually re-check is the supporting metadata clause, not the licence clause. The 2026-2027 General Annexes continue to require full bibliographic metadata and persistent identifiers (DOI, ORCID iD, ROR) on every deposited publication. Institutions that let repository metadata quality slip during the 2023-2025 cycle should treat the new Work Programme as a trigger to re-audit templates, not assume automatic carry-over.

    • Confirm the trusted-repository and CC BY licence clause wording in your institutional agreement template matches the 2026-2027 General Annexes text
    • Update publication-metadata forms to capture DOI, ORCID iD and ROR identifiers consistently
    • Re-brief researchers that “no embargo” still means no embargo, even for monographs and long-form outputs
    • Flag any project bidding into a new horizontal call for additional cross-cluster reporting fields

    FAIR data, Data Management Plans and the EOSC push

    The FAIR data obligation is also unchanged in substance: research data generated or collected under a funded grant must be Findable, Accessible, Interoperable and Reusable, and every applicable project must maintain a Data Management Plan (DMP) that is created early and updated across the project lifecycle. The principle “as open as possible, as closed as necessary” continues to govern the balance between openness and legitimate restriction — intellectual property, personal data and security exceptions still apply, but even restricted datasets must carry FAIR, openly accessible metadata.

    What is new is emphasis, not obligation. Work Programme documentation for the Missions strand explicitly references infrastructures “federated under the European Open Science Cloud (EOSC)”, and the 2026-2027 cycle leans further into EOSC as the delivery mechanism for FAIR compliance — pushing project consortia towards EOSC-compatible repositories and machine-actionable metadata rather than institution-specific solutions. Grant offices whose DMP templates still point researchers to generic “any FAIR repository” language should update guidance to name EOSC-aligned options explicitly.

    Structured contributor metadata is part of the same compliance chain: publications reporting Horizon Europe-funded work increasingly carry standardised role disclosures. CASRAI originated the CRediT contributor role taxonomy in 2014, and the standard is now stewarded by NISO as ANSI/NISO Z39.104-2022 — grant offices building publication-metadata checklists can treat CRediT-style role tagging as a practical way to strengthen the bibliographic metadata clause without waiting for a funder mandate to force it.

    Structural and procedural changes that affect compliance workflows

    Three procedural shifts in the 2026-2027 Work Programme indirectly affect how open science obligations get delivered, even though the obligations themselves are stable.

    • Lump-sum funding expansion. EMDESK’s analysis, citing Science|Business reporting on the final Work Programme text, puts lump-sum funding at roughly 50% of all 2026-2027 calls — up sharply from the partial rollout in 2023-2025. Lump-sum grants change how compliance is verified, since cost reporting is replaced by milestone and deliverable verification, which shifts open-access and DMP checks toward deliverable sign-off rather than cost-claim audit.
    • Horizontal calls. New cross-cluster calls address themes such as the Clean Industrial Deal and AI in science, spanning multiple Clusters within Pillar 2. These calls typically generate larger, more heterogeneous datasets, making FAIR data planning and interoperable metadata schemas more operationally important than under single-Cluster calls.
    • Broader, less prescriptive topics. With 35% fewer topics, each call description covers more ground, meaning the same open-access and data clauses now apply across a wider range of project types per topic — grant offices should not assume a topic’s compliance profile is self-evident from a shorter call text.

    Grant office FAQs and what happens next

    When did the Horizon Europe Work Programme 2026-2027 take effect?

    The European Commission adopted the Horizon Europe Work Programme 2026-2027 on 12 December 2025, per HaDEA’s official announcement, opening the programme’s final two-year cycle. Most single-stage call deadlines fall in September or October 2026, though some Clusters open earlier, with deadlines in March or April 2026.

    Is open access still mandatory under Horizon Europe 2026-2027?

    Yes. The 2026-2027 Work Programme retains the immediate open access mandate for peer-reviewed publications: no embargo, deposit in a trusted repository, a CC BY (or equivalent) licence, and complete bibliographic metadata with persistent identifiers. Grant offices should verify these clauses remain unchanged in institutional agreement templates.

    What is the FAIR data requirement in Horizon Europe 2026-2027?

    FAIR data means research data must be Findable, Accessible, Interoperable and Reusable, with a Data Management Plan required for projects that generate or collect data. “As open as possible, as closed as necessary” continues to apply, and metadata must remain FAIR even when underlying data is restricted.

    How many fewer call topics are there in the 2026-2027 Work Programme?

    According to the Commission’s General Introduction, Pillar 2’s collaborative research Clusters saw a 35% reduction in the number of topics compared with the 2023-2024 Work Programme, consolidating funding into broader, less prescriptive topic descriptions.

    None of this changes the substance of what a research office signs up to when it accepts Horizon Europe funding: immediate open access, FAIR-managed data, and a live Data Management Plan remain non-negotiable. What has changed is the operating environment around those obligations — fewer but broader topics, half of all calls running on lump sums, and new cross-cluster calls that will generate messier, larger datasets than before. Institutions that treat the 2026-2027 Work Programme as a compliance-template refresh, not just a new set of calls to bid into, will spend less time firefighting metadata and DMP queries once projects are underway.

  • UK Association to Horizon Europe: 2026 Status

    UK association to Horizon Europe remains in force through 2026: the UK has participated as a fully associated country since 1 January 2024, UK-based applicants can lead consortia and receive grants directly from the European Commission, and — because association status legally treats UK grantees as equivalent to EU institutions — those grantees are bound by the same immediate open-access and data-management obligations as any beneficiary in an EU member state.

    Horizon Europe is the European Union’s research and innovation funding programme, running from 2021 to 2027 with a budget of €95.5 billion; UK association is the bespoke agreement, effective 1 January 2024, that lets UK-based researchers, universities and businesses participate in it on equivalent terms to EU member states.

    Where does UK association actually stand in 2026?

    The UK’s association to Horizon Europe is not provisional or under renegotiation — it is a settled, operating arrangement. The UK and EU signed the Joint Statement on UK association on 7 September 2023, and association took legal effect on 1 January 2024, according to both the European External Action Service (EEAS) and the European Commission’s own country page for the United Kingdom.

    All Horizon Europe calls from Work Programme 2024 onward are covered directly by association. UK Research and Innovation (UKRI) confirms this remains the case in its guidance updated 9 February 2026: UK applicants “are eligible to receive funding directly from the European Commission” for calls issued between 2024 and 2027, the remaining lifetime of the current programme.

    According to Universities UK’s analysis published 27 May 2026, the first full year of association reversed a multi-year decline in UK research funding that followed the post-Brexit interruption — a data point that matters for institutional strategy, not just headline status.

    How UK grantees access funding: guarantee scheme vs direct EU payment

    UK-based institutions currently sit across two distinct funding mechanisms depending on when their grant was awarded, plus one narrow exclusion. Research offices managing legacy awards alongside new Horizon Europe grants need to track which regime applies to which project.

    Funding route Applies to Paid by Status in 2026
    UKRI Horizon Europe Guarantee Work Programmes 2021–2023 UK government (UKRI) Legacy; over £1 billion awarded as of April 2023, per UKRI
    Direct EU association funding Work Programmes 2024–2027 European Commission Active — current default route for new UK awards
    EIC Accelerator (equity/blended finance) Innovation Council fund N/A — excluded UK entities remain excluded from this specific fund, per the European Commission

    The exclusion is narrow and frequently misunderstood: it applies only to the equity and blended-finance component of the European Innovation Council (EIC) Accelerator, not to Horizon Europe participation generally. UK organisations remain eligible for EIC Accelerator grant-only funding and for every other pillar of the programme.

    HM Treasury’s 2021 Spending Review earmarked £6.9 billion (roughly €6.5 billion) to cover Horizon Europe association costs through 2025 — spanning both the transitional guarantee scheme and subsequent association-fee payments — a figure widely cited by pan-European research-advocacy analysis of UK reassociation costs.

    What open access and data rules apply to UK grantees?

    Because association is legally equivalent participation rather than a side arrangement, UK-based grant holders sign the same Horizon Europe Model Grant Agreement as any EU beneficiary, and Article 17’s open science conditions apply without modification. There is no “UK variant” of the mandate.

    • Immediate open access — peer-reviewed publications must be deposited in a trusted repository and made openly accessible at the moment of publication, with no embargo period permitted.
    • CC BY licensing — publications must carry a Creative Commons Attribution licence (or equivalent), with alternative CC licences permitted for long-form outputs such as monographs.
    • Trusted-repository deposit — a machine-readable copy of the accepted manuscript or published version must be deposited, independent of the journal’s own access model.
    • Data management and sharing — funded projects must maintain a data management plan aligned with FAIR principles and include a data-access statement in resulting publications.

    For UK research offices, the practical consequence is that Horizon Europe compliance sits on top of — not instead of — UK funder open-access policy (UKRI’s own OA policy) and REF-related outputs guidance. Grant agreement terms take precedence for Horizon Europe-funded outputs specifically, so institutions need workflows that flag Horizon Europe grants for the stricter, no-embargo standard even where a parallel UK funder policy would tolerate a delay.

    Answer-first Q&A

    Is the UK associated to Horizon Europe?

    Yes. The UK has been a fully associated country since 1 January 2024, under the Joint Statement signed with the EU on 7 September 2023. Association covers the remainder of the current programme, through 2027, and UK applicants participate on equivalent terms to EU member-state institutions.

    When did the UK join Horizon Europe?

    The UK’s association took legal effect on 1 January 2024, though eligible UK researchers had already been receiving guaranteed funding for successful Work Programme 2021–2023 bids via the UKRI guarantee scheme while the formal agreement was finalised.

    How much does the UK contribute to Horizon Europe?

    The UK government’s 2021 Spending Review earmarked £6.9 billion (around €6.5 billion) to cover Horizon Europe association costs through 2025, funding both the transitional guarantee scheme and the ongoing EU association-fee payments now in effect.

    Can UK organisations lead Horizon Europe project consortia?

    Yes. Under association, UK entities can coordinate and lead Horizon Europe consortium bids, not merely participate as partners — a right that was not guaranteed during the pre-2024 transitional period and is a material change for UK research administrators structuring proposals.

    What’s next: implications and the FP10 outlook

    For institutional leaders, the near-term implication is operational stability: association funding, eligibility and open-access terms are fixed for the remaining lifetime of Horizon Europe, so 2026–2027 planning can proceed on settled rules rather than provisional guidance. Research offices should treat any Horizon Europe award as automatically subject to immediate-OA and FAIR data-management terms, and audit existing compliance workflows against the Model Grant Agreement rather than domestic OA policy alone.

    The longer-term question is the successor programme, informally referred to across the sector as “FP10,” covering the EU’s next multiannual research cycle from 2028. The UK’s current association agreement is specific to Horizon Europe and does not automatically roll forward; continued UK participation in whatever follows will require a fresh negotiation, and institutions with multi-year projects spanning the transition should watch for European Commission and UKRI guidance on successor-programme terms as they emerge.

    For research administrators, the compliance takeaway is unambiguous: UK-based status does not create a lighter open-science obligation. Horizon Europe grantees in the UK operate under identical publication, licensing, repository and data-sharing terms to their EU-based collaborators, and that parity — not exemption — is what UK association was negotiated to secure.