European Commission and European Research Council’s Open Access policies

Open Access Infrastructure for Research in Europe (OpenAIRE) is a European Commission (EC) project, which aims to provides the support and infrastructure to enable Seventh Research Framework Programme (FP7) researchers to fulfil the EC-European Research Council’s (ERC) requirements for publications and data to be available in Open Access.

Since 2007, the ERC has required that all peer-reviewed publications from ERC-funded research projects be deposited into repositories, and available in Open Access within 6 months of publication, and that primary data be deposited into relevant databases, preferably immediately after publication or not later than 6 months.

Since 2008, the EC required Open Access to peer-reviewed research articles funded by the FP7. The articles resulting from this funding must be deposited into an institutional or subject-based repository. The initiative applies to the following areas:

• energy
• environment
• health
• information and communication technologies
• research Infrastructure
• science in society
• socio-economic sciences and humanities.

This applies to projects with Grant Agreements assigned after 2008 (with special clause 39).

More information for UK FP7 researchers and project coordinators can be obtained from the UK OpenAIRE website or by emailing openaire@nottingham.ac.uk. Support is also provided through the OpenAIRE European Helpdesk System.