Open science policies in the European Research Area

The European Research Area (ERA) encompasses the national research systems of the member states of the European Union along with research co-funding by the European Commission. Decisions made by the Council of the European Union regarding research evaluation and the promotion of open science are binding for EU member states (Council conclusions on research assessment and implementation of Open Science, 2022), and these must be integrated into national contexts, including Slovenia. The European Commission provides funding for the Horizon Europe program, whose guidelines on open science align with the decisions of the EU Council and include:

• mandatory immediate open availability of scientific publications licensed with the Creative Commons licenses via repositories, 
• mandatory preparation of a FAIR research data management plan, storage of data in a repository, and ensuring the data in the repository are "as open as possible and as closed as necessary"; additionally, data must be licensed under CC BY or CC0 licenses, 
• compliance with FAIR principles and open access to other research results are strongly recommended, including software, models, algorithms, processes, protocols, simulations, electronic laboratory logs, and physical samples, 
• the implementation of other facets of open science is also encouraged, with some becoming mandatory in specific Horizon Europe calls. These include: utilizing FAIR research data and services from the European Open Science Cloud (EOSC), early sharing of research findings, preregistration of research, registered reports, sharing of preprints, open review processes, and engagement of citizens or citizen science initiatives. 

The provisions on open science in the Horizon Europe program are described in more detail in the Horizon Europe Program Guide (Chapter 14. Dissemination and exploitation of research results, paragraph 5. Implement open science practices, and chapter 16. Open science). 

EU member states are also members of UNESCO, which adopted UNESCO Recommendation on Open Sciencein 2021. UNESCO's recommendations are aligned with the provisions on open science in the European Research Area.