Horizon Europe funding program has very strong requirements for the management of research data. Regulation (EU) 2021/695 of the European Parliament and of the Council emphasizes the importance of responsible data management and open research data. Data management should follow FAIR principles aka “comply with the principles of findability, accessibility, interoperability and ‘reusability”. The principle “as open as possible, as closed as necessary” already known from the previous program period applies to the openness of research data. Good data management is a prerequisite for making the data openly available.
General Model Grant Agreement (.pdf) for Horizon Europe lists four major actions which must be considered in the data management.
- Preparing and updating of a data management plan are essential requirements. At the application stage, the plan may still be a draft. Beneficiaries must submit a more comprehensive plan during the 6th month of the project. For projects lasting more than a year, the plan must be updated at the middle and end of the project. In addition, there is a strong recommendation to publish a data management plan under a CC BY license. Horizon Europe has its own data management plan template (.docx). Use of the template is not obligatory, but at least the template serves as an excellent checklist of things to include in the plan.
- The data must be deposited in a trusted data archive (if the data cannot be made openly available, this must be justified). The characteristics of a trusted data archive are, for example, a certificate indicating trustworthiness (for example, the Core Trust Seal), clear terms of use for the data and a persistent identifier given to the data.
- Open access to the data must be made possible without delays and as described in the data management plan. The terms of use of the data can be defined, for example, with CC BY or CC0 licenses or the like. Openness of research data is a strategic and carefully considered and prepared decision.
- Provide information via the repository about any research output or any other tools and instruments needed to re-use or validate the data.
It is worth checking the application-specific and thematic regulations separately, as the requirements and additional obligations for applications are different. More detailed information about requirements can be found in the work programs and application documents.
