Research funders requirements

The European funding programme Horizon Europe has replaced the H2020 programme since 2021 and will fund research projects until 2027. The focus is on data management: the European Commission states that beneficiaries must manage the digital research data generated as part of the action responsibly, in line with the FAIR principles. The measures to be implemented are as follows.

Writing and updating a data management plan

The European Commission asks all the grantees to write and regularly update a data management plan. This deliverable must be uploaded to the Participant Portal according to the following timetable:

• an initial version of the DMP within the first 6 months of the research project
• an updated intermediate version for the mid-term evaluation
• the finished version at the end of the project

Depositing data in a trusted repository

Data must be deposited in a trusted repository:

• as soon as possible
• within the deadlines set out in the DMP
• in open access

if required in the call conditions, this repository must be federated in the European Open Science Cloud (EOSC) in compliance with EOSC requirements

Using CC-BY ou CC-0 licenses

Open access must be ensured via the repository to the deposited data, under the latest available version of the Creative Commons Attribution International Public License (CC BY) or Creative Commons Public Domain Dedication (CC0) or a licence with equivalent rights, following the principle ‘as open as possible as closed as necessary’, unless providing open access would in particular:

• be against the beneficiary’s legitimate interests, including regarding commercial exploitation, or
• be contrary to any other constraints, in particular the EU competitive interests or the beneficiary’s obligations under the Agreement;

If open access is not provided (to some or all data), this must be justified in the DMP

Identifying tools and instruments

Information must be provided via the repository about any research output or any other tools and instruments needed to re-use or validate the data.

Providing metadata

Metadata of deposited data must be:

• open under a Creative Common Public Domain Dedication (CC 0) or equivalent (to the extent legitimate interests or constraints are safeguarded)
• in line with the FAIR principles (in particular machine-actionable)
• provide information at least about the following: datasets (description, date of deposit, author(s), venue and embargo); Horizon Europe or Euratom funding; grant project name, acronym and number; licensing terms; persistent identifiers for the dataset, the authors involved in the action, and, if possible, for their organisations and the grant.

Where applicable, the metadata must include persistent identifiers for related publications and other research outputs.

Writing a Data Management Plan

Since the Generic Call for Proposals 2019, the ANR open science policy requires all grantees to prepare a DMP that describes how the scientific data will be managed and shared.

The DMP is a deliverable that must be deposited in your personal space on the ANR website, according to the following schedule:

• an initial version within the first 6 months after the scientific start of the project
• an updated version at the mid-term review (for projects lasting more than 30 months)
• the data management plan completed at the end of the project

Opening the research data

One of the goals of the common policy of the "open science" network of French research funding agencies is to open up scientific data, in line with the "as open as possible, as closed as necessary" paradigm. The data must then be deposited in a research data repository.

Opening and archiving source code and softwares

Finally, in accordance with the second national plan for open science, ANR recommends that the software developed during the research project be made available under an open licence and that the source code bearchived in Software Heritage and described in HAL, indicating the grant number (decision code) of the ANR funding.