Ten national research funding and performing organizations in eight European countries announced on January 15th they signed a Statement of Intent to affirm their commitment to support and fund the open access publishing platform Open Research Europe (ORE) as a collective, not-for-profit open access publishing service for an initial period of five years, starting in 2026.
Other organizations are invited to sign this statement and be part of the collaboration and financial agreement that committed funders and research performing organizations will endorse by June 2025 to support and fund the operation of future ORE.
This statement of intent is the first step towards implementing the vision and principle put forward in the scoping report “Open Research Europe: Towards a collective open access publishing service”, published by the European Commission in September 2024, and evolve ORE in the envisioned collectively funded open access publishing platform while ensuring its equity, transparency and sustainability. It supports ongoing efforts to create a pan-European partnership that will sustain ORE, advance open access publishing, and foster high-quality research. This commitment also aligns with the global movement towards equitable and open scholarly publishing.
Open Research Europe
Open Research Europe (ORE) is the open access publishing platform launched in March 2021 by the European Commission. Launching ORE, the European Commission wished to foster institutional, not-for-profit open access publishing, transparency, and cost-efficiency in publishing for the public good, taking off the burden from researchers and administrators while ensuring full compliance with Horizon Europe's open access requirements.
The European Commission is committed to supporting ORE in the long term as an integral part of the European Research AREA (ERA). In September 2024 the European Commission published the Scoping Report “Open Research Europe: Towards a collective open access publishing service”. This report is the result of a rigorous co-creation process involving the Commission services several national research funding and performing organisations, namely NWO (NL), DFG (DE), FORMAS, FORTE, and SRC (SE), FWF (AT), ANR (FR), HRB (IE), RCN (NO), FNR (LU), ETAG (EE), CSIC (Spain), MSMT (CZ), INFN (IT). It also takes into account R&I stakeholder input including through a meeting held in 2023.
The report puts forward a shared vision and principles to underpin Open Research Europe (ORE) as a collectively supported publishing service. The ten main principles to permeate the operation of ORE are: Ensuring High-Quality Research and its Integrity; Maximising Accessibility and Usability; Supporting an Expanding Range of Contributions; Community Building; A Distributed, Open Infrastructure; Equity, Diversity & Inclusivity; Facilitating the Evaluation of Research; Promoting Flexibility & Innovation; Cost-Effectiveness; Accountability to the Research Community & the Public.
More specifically, the scoping report proposes that ORE is transitioned into a publishing service collectively supported by research funders and also research institutions, who will fund its operations on a non-profit basis for the public good. This proposal has gained support through two Council Conclusions in 2022 and 2023, which invite Member States and research funding organisations to consider joining the Open Research Europe initiative and encouraging Member States to support the piloting of Open Research Europe (ORE) into a collective, not-for-profit large-scale open access research publishing service for the public good.
These discussions on the future of ORE occur amid a global movement towards more equitable and open scholarly communication and research practices rooted in open science. Open science practices should permeate scholarly communication, placing the quality of work at the heart of the research process and assessment. Research institutions should have greater agency in developing an equitable publishing system that is affordable and fair for all parties involved. Policy initiatives, such as the development of a global Coalition for the Advancement of Research Assessment (COARA), position papers on the future of scholarly communication and responsible publishing, reform of scientific publishing and Diamond Open Access Publishing, and world-wide activities like UNESCO’s announcement of a Global Diamond Open Access Alliance, along with Commission-supported projects such as DIAMAS and CraftOA, drive the adoption of open science principles in the research process and community.
The future of ORE: implementing the vision
In the last two years, the EC has been exploring with a group of national research funders, performing organization and Ministries, including MUR and INFN, how best to evolve ORE into the envisioned collectively funded open access publishing platform allowing researchers from participating countries and institutions to publish in ORE at no cost to them, hence increasing the scale and scoping of the publishing venue.
The interested organisations plan to sign a collaboration and financing agreement by the end of 2025, enabling the operation of ORE as a collectively funded platform from 2026 to 2031. The collective service is expected to launch in mid-2026, with the European Commission continuing to provide significant funding. It is envisioned that the collective service will also progressively align with the diamond open access principles defined in the ‘Action Plan for Diamond Open Access’.
Open research Europe publishing model
Currently ORE offers beneficiaries of all the EU Framework Programme (not only Horizon2020 and Horizon Europe) a cost-free innovative open access publishing service, while ensuring high scientific quality through a rigorous and open peer review process. ORE supports open science practices within scientific publishing, such as
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early and open sharing of research,
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the recognition of and rewarding for diverse research outputs
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visibility for peer review as a research contribution.
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Open Data Policy aligned to the requirements for Research Data Management and FAIR principles
ORE follows an innovative open access publishing model (see Figure 1), which is based on open peer review after publication (the so-called ‘post-publication open peer review’ model), and metrics at article level. In ORE, emphasis is placed on the merit and impact (scientific, societal, economic) of individual publications, each article has a dedicated metrics page, and not on venue-based indicators as proxies of quality (e.g. the Journal Impact Factor), which supports initiatives such as the Coalition for Advanced Research Assessment (CoARA).
Figure 1 ORE publishing model
A wide range of research outcomes in all science field can be published on ORE (see Figure 2).
Figure 2 Full range of research outputs accepted for publication in ORE
Researchers and the overall public research system will greatly benefit from ORE as it allows:
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Improved accessibility to publications that support research excellence, integrity and equity
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Early publication of research results, and publishing throughout the research process in open access, enabling the sharing of new findings without delay
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Participation in constructive and transparent scholarly dialogue through open peer-review, improving the outputs of research and its reproducibility
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Publication of a wide range of research outputs from new insights to confirmatory or negative results, credited to authors/creators (see figure 1)
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Increased role of open infrastructures in scholarly communication
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Increased equity in accessing publishing services without fees for all authors.
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Economies of scale and cost-efficiency in scholarly publishing
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Increased role of funders and HEIs in non-profit publishing
In addition the ORE publishing model is based on a robust open peer review process, a win-win process (Figure 3) that allows peer-reviews be published in open access under a CC BY licence hence be cited, thus credited to their authors as legitimate research output. An extensive list of questions, which must be answered, guides the review process, appropriate for different domains and there is also a reviewer code of conduct to be followed. Once all necessary reviews performed, the editorial team checks for process, content, language and correct status, and completes the publishing process.
Figure 3 Open peer review benefits; a) for Authors; b) for Reviewers
For further information on how to publish in ORE: https://open-research-europe.ec.europa.eu/for-authors/publish-your-research
16 gennaio 2025
