Recently, projects supported by the EU and other grant agencies have included a requirement to make publications available in the Open Access mode. To meet the conditions, it is usually possible to use both Open Access routes – publication results can be made available by publishing in Open Access journals, as well as by depositing in an Open Access repository.

When applying for a grant, it is important to think about the prospective higher financial demands and include them in the project. Also later, when publishing a scientific article or other documents, the author should not forget about the terms and conditions of the project and adapt the licence agreement with the publisher so that it allows the output to be later deposited in an Open Access repository.

On the following pages, you will find information on which projects require open access for their research outputs and how to comply with these requests.

Open Access in Horizon 2020 projects

• Grant beneficiaries must deposit a machine-readable electronic copy of the published version or final peer-reviewed manuscript accepted for publication in a repository dedicated to the storage of scientific publications. It must be deposited as soon as possible, and at the latest on the day of publication, even in the case of Gold Open Access. In addition, grant beneficiaries must make efforts to deposit the data needed to validate the results presented in the deposited scientific publication, ideally in a repository dedicated to data storage.
• Once the publication in question and, where possible, the associated data used to verify the results presented in the publication have been deposited, grant beneficiaries must ensure open access to the publication through the repository of their choice. There are two options for ensuring open access:
• Green Open Access – the publication in question must be openly accessible in the repository after six months from publication (twelve months for publications produced in social sciences and humanities projects)
• Gold Open Access – publishing in journals that provide immediate open access to articles (open access or hybrid journals); this usually involves a one-off payment by the author of the article, which is usually between 1 500 and 2 500 EUR. These costs are known as Article Processing Charges (APCs) and are eligible costs for Horizon 2020 if they are incurred for the duration of the project resulting in the publication in question.
• In addition, grant beneficiaries must provide open access to metadata used to identify the subject publication through the repository. In order to make the results of Horizon 2020 supported research discoverable, the guide also provides conditions for the structure of the metadata. The metadata should include the following terms: “European Union (EU)” and “Horizon 2020”

At the BUT you can fulfil the obligation using the Green Open Access option by depositing the publication in the BUT Digital Library.

Open Access in Horizon Europe projects

The conditions in Horizon Europe are in many ways the same as those of the previous Horizon 2020 programme, but there are the following differences:

• The full text of the article must be deposited and made available in the repository immediately (the option of delayed publication after an embargo no longer applies). If the publisher or journal does not allow the article to be published by self-archiving or without embargo, it is possible to try to negotiate an exception in a contract addendum.
• It is not possible to publish in hybrid OA journals, but only in fully open journals.
• Articles must be published under the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) or equivalent licence; other Creative Commons licences (CC BY-NC, CC BY- NC-ND) may be used for other publications (e.g. monographs).
• Open access must also be provided for the metadata. Metadata should be published under CC 0 (public domain). It is also important that the metadata comply with the FAIR principles.

Open Access in OP JAK projects

The Jan Ámos Komenský Operational Programme applies the principles of open science as a mandatory condition. In terms of open access to scientific publications, the applicant is obliged to:

• deposit a machine-readable copy (of the final publisher’s version or the accepted version of the manuscript) in a trusted repository for scientific publications no later than at the date of publication;
• provide access to the deposited publication under the latest version of the Creative Commons Attribution International (CC BY) licence; monographs and other longer publications can be shared under licences that restrict adaptation or commercial use (CC BY-NC, CC BY-ND, CC BY-NC-ND);
• ensure provide access to metadata in the repository;
• retain copyright ownership in order to meet the previous conditions;
• provide information (= deposit in the repository) about other outputs or any other tools that are necessary to verify the conclusions of the scientific publication.

Everything is clearly and in detail described in the Open Science Handbook.

Open access in projects of the Czech Science Foundation

In the projects of the Czech Science Foundation (GA CR), open access to publication outputs is not required. However, there is a reference to open access in the Tender Documents:

If the practices in the field, the nature of the results and the conditions of the project allow it, it is appropriate to publish the results in the form of Open Access, or to submit the publication outputs to open digital archives, in accordance with the publisher’s licensing terms.

Open access in projects of the Technology Agency of the Czech Republic

The open approach is introduced in the Technology Agency of the Czech Republic (TA CR) with the KAPPA project. The obligation to publish openly by depositing in a repository is set for type J results – peer-reviewed article; the supporting data should also be deposited in a data storage repository.

It is possible to publish openly using both the Gold and Green Open Access options, TA CR recommends not transferring copyright and publishing under public licences (e.g. Creative Commons, CC BY). Metadata about the result should also be published openly. The costs associated with providing open access constitute eligible costs.

All relevant information is available at https://www.tacr.cz/otevreny-pristup-v-programu-kappa/.