General questions - aims and scope
The European Commission is responsible for Open Research Europe, an open access publishing service offered to authors involved in Horizon 2020 (and soon in Horizon Europe) projects for publishing their research stemming from Horizon 2020 funding. The Commission has contracted
F1000 Research through a tendering procedure to provide the open research publishing infrastructure and editorial services for Open Research Europe. Open Research Europe boasts a strong and international
Scientific Advisory Board that offers scientific advice to the Commission and F1000 Research, ensuring high scientific standards are adhered to in the publications of the platform. F1000 Research has subcontracted three expert partners
Eurodoc,
the Global Young Academy and
LIBER Europe to help steer the project and ensure that many stakeholders are reached. The progress of the implementation of the tender is followed within the Commission through an Internal Steering Group, comprising members from different Commission services.
The Commission intends to:
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Provide a high-quality service that meets general and discipline-specific standards of scientific publishing.
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Reinforce its position as a funder that leads by example in operationalising open science.
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Encourage technology-enabled innovations in scholarly communication.
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Support the integrity and transparency of the research process and reproducibility of research.
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Contribute towards transparency and cost effectiveness in scientific publishing, as well as towards the exploration of sustainable open access business models.
Open Research Europe is a publishing solution that includes all commonly known services of scholarly publishing, with open science features and their added benefits: articles that have passed a prepublication check are published rapidly as a preprint (and cannot be published elsewhere), are immediately open and undergo an invited and transparent peer review process. Articles receive a digital footprint and are assigned industry-standard open-metadata and open licenses in order to ensure their discoverability and citability. Because the Commission strongly supports the view that publications should be judged on their intrinsic value, a wide range of article-level metrics is available to provide indications of use and reuse, and to support responsible research and researcher assessment and evaluation.
No. Open Research Europe is a peer reviewed publishing platform. Part of its workflow is like that of a preprint server: as a first step authors rapidly publish their work as a preprint. However, the important distinction is that publication is always automatically followed by invited transparent open peer review. Open Research Europe manages the peer review service, thus completing the publication process. Open Research Europe accepts original research that has not been published before and is not considered for publication elsewhere. Once submitted as a preprint in Open Research Europe, the publications cannot be submitted elsewhere to be peer reviewed.
Open Research Europe is not a research repository for published articles or preprints. Open Research Europe is an open access publishing platform for research stemming from Horizon 2020, publishing original research that has not been published before and is not being considered for peer review elsewhere.
The publication policies of Open Research Europe were developed by
F1000 Research, an experienced publisher and service provider, in collaboration with the European Commission. The
Scientific Advisory Board of the platform also provides its opinions and advice regarding the publishing policies. Finally, the publishing policies of Open Research Europe are aligned to the policies and requirements of the current European research framework programme, Horizon 2020, aligning with open access to publications and data, data management, and ethics policies.
No. Horizon 2020 beneficiaries are free to choose where they wish to publish their research. However, we hope that the breadth of article types supported, alongside the speed and ease of publication, the rigour and transparency of the peer review process and the high scientific standards for all disciplines, coupled with the absence of author fees, will be attractive to many researchers.
Publishing in Open Research Europe
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Authors, not editors, choose what they wish to publish.
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Rapid publication enables the sharing of new findings without delay.
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Publication of a wide range of outputs is supported – from standard research articles to data notes, from new insights to confirmatory or negative results.
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The transparent open peer review process facilitates open and constructive discussion with reviewers specifically to help the authors improve their research and to provide credit for the reviewer’s expertise.
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All versions of an article are linked and independently citable.
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Full support of underlying data that meets the FAIR (Findable, Accessible, Interoperable and Reusable) principles to enable reanalysis, replication and reuse, and thus improving reproducibility and increasing impact.
The fee for publication on Open Research Europe is EUR 780. All fees are paid centrally by the Commission. Authors do not need to find the funds to cover the costs themselves during or after the end of their grants. See our
publication fees for more information.
Open Research Europe does not have and will not ask to have an Impact Factor. The European Commission is part of an increasing number of funding agencies, institutions and organizations that are keen to support a broader view of a researcher’s output, and that it is the intrinsic value of what is published, shared and re-used, that is important as opposed to the venue, journal or platform where an article is published.
Open Research Europe supports the responsible use of research-related metrics and its application to research assessment - following, among others, the
Leiden Manifesto and the
DORA Declaration. Each article published on Open Research Europe includes an article-level metrics page demonstrating the individual article’s reach, interest and ‘quality’. It also includes traditional indicators such as article citation data alongside more qualitative indicators such as views, downloads, social media and wider engagement.
Articles published on this platform are associated with a variety of quantitative and qualitative metrics to provide open, article-level information, allowing the article to be evaluated on its own merit. Transparent reviewing of all articles through open peer review also provides an important assessment at the article level, in addition to more traditional measures such as views, downloads and citations. The scope of Open Research Europe is to encourage the publication of high-quality research from Horizon 2020 funding. The Commission expects funders and institutions to recognize the platform as a comparable publication venue to traditional journals.
All researchers involved in projects or grants of Horizon 2020 are eligible to publish any research outputs they wish to share across all fields of science and technology, which include: Natural Sciences, Engineering and Technology, Medical Sciences, Agricultural and Veterinary Sciences, Social Sciences, Humanities and the Arts. At least one author must be involved in a running or completed Horizon 2020 project from the European Commission and the article must be a result of that project. The platform publishes original research that has not been published before and is not being considered for peer review elsewhere.
Open Research Europe publishes many different types of articles. For a detailed description of each article type, please see the
article guidelines. Open Research Europe welcomes positive, negative or null studies, replication studies and refutation studies equally.
Currently, Open Research Europe publishes articles in English language only.
Yes. Horizon 2020 requires that open access be provided for peer-reviewed publications immediately or, at the latest, six or twelve months after publication (for science technology & medicine, and social sciences & humanities fields, respectively) via a repository. Publishing in Open Research Europe means that you provide immediate open access to your peer-reviewed publication through the platform itself. To fulfill the compliance of the policy requirement for open access through repositories and to support the long-term preservation of publications, Open Research Europe sends peer-reviewed versions of publications to
Zenodo, a general purpose repository maintained by CERN. You may deposit your peer-reviewed publication in any other repository you see fit for your discipline, including your institutional repository.
Authorship
Open Research Europe uses the CRediT taxonomy to capture author contributions as we believe that having more detail of who did what brings transparency, enables recognition for researchers, and provides greater accountability for all involved. Upon submission you will be asked to select from a 14-item list, all the contributions made by each author. For more information, click here.
If the author list of an article changes following its publication, a new version of the article can be published, with an explanation included in the ‘Amendments’ section at the top of the new version. As each version of an article has its own DOI, these can be individually cited and accessed. Therefore, the authorship list can change without affecting earlier versions of the article. The authorship contributions must also be revised accordingly.
Any changes in authorship must be confirmed by all authors in writing or over email, and the corresponding author is responsible for obtaining this confirmation from their co-authors. The Open Research Europe team may also contact any co-authors directly to obtain this confirmation.
Anyone who has contributed to the study but does not meet the criteria for authorship should be listed in the Acknowledgments section. It is the authors responsibility to obtain permission to include the name and affiliation, from all those mentioned in the Acknowledgments section.
How does open invited peer review of articles after publication work?
This is an advantage of this specific publishing model. Conducting peer review after publication removes the delay for others who can benefit from accessing the work during the reviewing period. Closed review processes typically take many months. Open Research Europe removes the possibility of an article being blocked or held up by a single editor or reviewer. It also allows other researchers in the field to judge the work for themselves and start building upon it, perhaps repeating the analysis for themselves, while expert reviewers assess it.
They definitively are. Articles are checked by our in-house editorial team (provided by F1000 Research) who ensure that each submitted article is (co-)authored by a Horizon 2020 grantholder. We also check that article submissions are complete, not plagiarized, and that they meet ethical standards. See our
publishing policies for more information on our pre-publication checks.
As peer review takes place after publication, authors can submit a new version of their article that addresses any concerns or shortcomings that were identified during the peer-review process. Once a new version of an article is published, the reviewers are asked to re-review the article and check whether their concerns have been addressed.
All versions of an article are accessible, each with their own DOI (digital object identifier) and may be cited individually. The most recent article version is displayed as the default, and older article versions display a clear notification that newer versions are available.
All versions of every article are retained and are accessible to readers, but if you visit an older version of an article, for example via a citation, a message will appear on-screen to alert you that there is a newer version available. If you have stored a version of the article's PDF in a reference manager or on your computer, you can ensure it is the most recent version by using the CrossMark button: when you click it you will be able to see immediately if newer versions of the article are available.
No. Articles awaiting peer review in Open Research Europe are officially published as preprints that will then undergo the peer review process. You can cite articles that are awaiting peer review (for example in other articles, CVs or grant applications), because the citation includes details of the peer review status, making it clear to everyone what stage of peer review the article has reached. Readers who later follow the citation link to view the article will be able to see its current peer review status.
Not quite. Most importantly, 'Not Approved' does not mean 'Rejected'. It simply means that the reviewer considers the current version of the article not to be of a high enough standard; they may have identified some flaws that seriously undermine the results and conclusions, unless they are fixed. The article remains published and a future revised version, if the reviewers judge it to be sufficiently improved, may then be given an 'Approved' or 'Approved with Reservations'.
The term 'Approved' means that the reviewer considers the article to be technically sound, and has either no or only minor revisions.
'Approved with Reservations' means that the reviewer believes the article has academic merit, but has asked for a number of small changes to the article, or specific, sometimes more significant revisions.
In every case, even when all reviewers approve the article, future versions are welcome.
New article versions are considered to be revisions when they incorporate amendments in response to peer review comments.
Versions are considered to be updates when the authors wish to add small developments or new information to the article, usually after it has passed peer review.
You can revise your article at any time by publishing a new version, which will be displayed as the default. There are no extra APC charges for publishing a revised version of your article, and we would encourage you to revise your article in response to peer review. If we are expecting further reviews to be submitted in the near future, we may sometimes recommend that you wait until the reviews are published. However, as our publishing process is entirely driven by the authors, it is your decision when you feel the time is right for a revision.
To submit a revised or updated version of your article, you must be signed into the submitting author’s Open Research Europe account. Please download the document provided on the Submissions page and ensure that track changes are turned on whilst editing the document. More information on how to create a new version, please visit
Article Guidelines (new versions).
No, you can’t. Once your article has been published on Open Research Europe, it has a formal citation with a DOI, which means that we must retain a permanent record of the full content and not change or remove it. If you would like to change your article, you can publish a
new version; this way, someone looking for your original article will be automatically redirected to the new and revised version. Obviously, if you discover there is something seriously wrong with the whole article, such as your samples getting mixed up or the key results were generated using a faulty reagent, you can ask us to mark the article as “retracted” and add a note explaining what happened. See details of our
correction, replacement, and retraction policies.
Open peer review – how does this work at Open Research Europe?
Yes - we name our reviewers and publish their reviews alongside the article. Everyone visiting an article page or viewing its PDF can see all the reviews, reviewer names and comments.
Constructive criticism is a core part of a reviewer's job, so peer reviews often contain suggestions for improvements or insights into an article's weaknesses. Our peer reviews are no different in this regard. What does make Open Research Europe different is that you can respond to your reviewers, to clarify and explain. And if a reviewer points out errors or omissions in your article, or suggests ways to improve it, you can publish a revised version that addresses these issues.
Peer reviewers are asked to focus on whether the presented research is ‘sound’ and presented in sufficient detail for others to reproduce, not on the extent of novelty or interest. As experts in the field, the reviewers might judge a published article to not be sound science, or to require significant changes before it can be considered sound. Consequently, on rare occasions, some published articles may be unanimously negatively reviewed.
However, the article is never ‘rejected’ and authors are able to submit a revised version of their article that addresses the reviewers' criticisms; there no time constraints imposed by an editor, so if extensive revisions are required, authors can spend as much time as needed to address any issues. Authors can at any point defend their work with a comment that is posted in response to the critical reviewer(s).
If authors feel that a reviewer has been unfairly negative about their work, they can also request a new reviewer on either the original version or any revised version of their article. If the authors feel that multiple reviewers have been unfairly negative they should contact
editorial@open-research-europe.ec.europa.eu to discuss their concerns, to ensure that the peer review process remains unbiased.
Reviewers are formally invited by the Open Research Europe editorial team (as is the case with most journals). The editorial team are primarily responsible for identifying suitable reviewers; however, the authors are welcome to suggest additional reviewers if they wish- all reviewers, including those from authors, are checked to ensure they are suitable to review before they are invited to contribute a report. Prospective reviewers who have collaborated or are currently collaborating with any of the authors are not eligible to review the article in question. Reviewers are also asked to declare any competing interests.
The Open Research Europe team administers the peer-review process on behalf of the authors. We contact the reviewers and assist them during the peer review. We ask that authors do not contact the reviewers directly as this can influence the objectivity of their reviews.
The peer review status of an article is clearly indicated at all stages:
- Immediately on publication, and until the first peer review is published, the article is labelled as AWAITING PEER REVIEW - as part of the article title and in the Open Peer Review summary box within the article HTML and PDF.
- As soon as a review is published alongside the article, the current approval status is displayed. As additional reviews are received, the approval status is updated.
- Once Open Research Europe has been approved by bibliographic databases, articles that receive two ‘Approved’ statuses, or two ‘Approved with Reservations’ statuses and one ‘Approved’ status, will be indexed there.
Please avoid promoting preprints and articles in the media until the article has passed the open peer review process (i.e. it has received at least two Approved peer reviews or one Approved plus two Approved with Reservations reviews). Promotion on social media is encouraged once the article has been peer reviewed; please ensure the full citation is included, as this contains the approval status. Open Research Europe should be cited as the source of these articles with a link to the article.
We encourage unsolicited open discussion on all articles. Such contributions are published through our Comment system, and
according to our policies anyone who wishes to comment on an article will be asked to declare any competing interests, along with their full name and affiliation.
While we welcome open debate and discussion, we will not tolerate abusive behavior towards our authors and reviewers via our Comment system or via social media. In extreme cases we will consider contacting the affiliated institution to report the abusive behavior of individuals.
Indexing and preservation
Articles will appear in Google Scholar. An article that has passed peer review (i.e. it has received at least two Approved peer reviews, or one Approved plus two Approved with Reservations reviews) will be indexed in PubMed and other bibliographic databases, once the platform has undergone a formal evaluation process by these indexing services.
All articles that pass peer review (have received at least two Approved peer reviews, or one Approved plus two Approved with Reservations reviews) will automatically be sent to
Zenodo. Open Research Europe plans to syndicate published content with institutional and national repositories in Europe and will gradually add to the options of repositories that we send content to, following the preference of the author.
All our articles are indexed by
Portico. Data and code associated with articles are only stored in repositories that we have approved based on (among other things) their archiving policies. The platform also sends articles that have passed peer review to
Zenodo, a general purpose repository maintained by CERN.
Source data and materials
Open Research Europe aligns with the policies and requirements of the current European research framework programme on depositing data and materials. Depositing your data and materials with an approved repository means that other researchers can analyse and use it and can try to reproduce your results. There are exceptions for open access to research data in some circumstances; please see our
data preparation guidelines for more information.
If there is a subject-specific repository for the type of data you are submitting, you may deposit the data there. For more information about suitable repositories and providing, preparing and hosting of data, please see our
data preparation guidelines. For anything else, please
contact us and we will be happy to advise on the best way to make your data available.
We recommend the use of the
CC0 (Creative Commons Public Domain Dedication) license for any datasets that are made available with your Open Research Europe article.
There is no easy answer to this question; it all depends on the study involved. The overarching rule is that there should be enough data provided that another researcher could reanalyse and/or try to reproduce your study. If you are unsure, please contact the
editorial team.
How to cite articles, datasets and peer reviews
We have adapted the traditional system of article citation to include two additional elements - the article version number and the number of peer reviews that have received 'Approved', 'Approved with Reservations' or 'Not Approved' statuses. This information is placed in square brackets immediately after the article title to avoid it being accidentally removed on copying. All articles are assigned a DOI (digital object identifier). An article should be cited like this:
Authors. Article title [version number; details of peer review status]. Open Res Europe YEAR, volume:publication number (doi).
The full citation for an article can be obtained by clicking the Cite button on the article page.
All peer reviews associated with Open Research Europe articles are assigned a DOI (digital object identifier) on publication. This means that they can be cited independently from the article. The full citation for a peer review can be obtained by clicking the Cite button on the review. The correct format for a peer review citation is:
Reviewer name(s). Peer Review For: Article title [version number; details of peer review status]. Open Res Europe YEAR, volume:publication number (doi)
Source datasets and materials associated with Open Research Europe articles are deposited in repositories that meet
certain criteria. Articles include a Data Availability Statement outlining where the source data can be found, including the permanent identifier the dataset(s) have been assigned by the repository and a reference with details of how to cite the dataset(s).
Licenses and copyright
Open Research Europe articles are usually published under a CC-BY license, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited, and leaves the copyright of the article with the current copyright holder (usually the author or their institution). As the specific version of the CC-BY license applied may change due to periodic updates, the copyright information is shown below the abstract.
All peer reviews for articles on Open Research Europe are published under a CC-BY license, permitting unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. The copyright remains with the current copyright holder (usually the reviewers or their institution). To ensure that copyright and licensing information is accurate, each peer review has a ‘Copyright information’ section published alongside it.
Authors should deposit the research data underlying their publication in a repository and provide open access to them under a Creative Commons Attribution Public License (CC BY) or a Creative Commons Public Domain Dedication (CC0) or a license with equivalent rights. There are exceptions for open access to research data in some circumstances; please see our
data preparation guidelines for more information.