Open Access To OPTICON Results

It is a requirement of Horizon 2020 grants, of which OPTICON is one, that publications resulting from the grant should be made in an Open Access journal unless there are compelling reasons why not. We believe that observations supported by the OPTICON TNA programme should meet this requirement. For more information about open access, download the infographic at

Open Access Infographic [PDF/140 KB]

or consult the participant portal at:

Open Access Participant Portal

Green Open Access

This is the lower of the two allowable standards and easiest and cheapest to meet. To comply with this standard a machine-readable copy of the peer-reviewed version of the paper [not a pre-print] should be deposited in an OpenAIRE compliant repository on publication, and the full-text should be made available as open access within six months for STEM subjects. The website Sherpa Romeo gives publisher deposit guidelnes, copyright rules and embargo timescales for many journals. Your own instituional library should be able to advise you on how to meet this requirement and we encourage you to consult with them. Here is a non-binding summary of how we interpret the rules.

Astro-ph/ArXiv meets the Green Open Access requirement. Since some publishers do not allow users to post on Astro-ph, some other other compatible repositories can be found at the OpenAIRE website. The website at Zenodo is OpenAIRE compliant and can be used for both papers and data.

If the publisher has a longer embargo period than is acceptable (Eg ICARUS), the EU advises sending an Addendum to the publisher to ask them to amend their embargo. Contact the project scientist for details if you are unsure.

We believe the following journals, into which OPTICON astronomers have often put results, meet the EC H2020 requirements for open access provided the authors put the post-prints into an OpenAIRE compliant depository.

We believe the following journals do not met the requrements without special dispensations.