EU-Wide Advantages & Opportunities – HORIZON-WIDERA-2025-06-ERA-02

Overview

“Enable sustained coordination and guidance at the European level on institutional non-profit open access publishing” is a Coordination & Support Action (CSA) that is designed for impact that only the EU scale can deliver. By leveraging the Single Market, common regulatory frameworks and pan-European R&I infrastructures, consortia can build a genuinely continental network of institutional, non-profit (often ‘diamond’) open-access (OA) publishers. Below is a structured analysis of the unique advantages and opportunities available when operating EU-wide rather than nationally.

1. Single Market Reach: 450+ Million Potential Consumers of Knowledge

• Critical Mass of Users – A European-level platform instantly addresses the world’s second-largest research and education market, ensuring wide readership and usage metrics that strengthen the credibility of institutional OA journals/monographs.

• Economies of Scale – Shared technical back-ends (hosting, DOIs, long-term preservation) lower per-unit costs compared with fragmented national solutions.

• Market Signalling – EU-branded quality seals and adherence to common standards (Plan S, CHORUS, COAR, DOAJ criteria) reassure authors, readers and research evaluators, increasing author uptake that might otherwise default to commercial publishers.

2. Cross-Border Collaboration & Knowledge Exchange

• Mandatory Multinational Consortia unlock complementary expertise (e.g., Scandinavian library publishing know-how, German infrastructure, Mediterranean multilingual dissemination).

• Staff Mobility & Twinning – The topic explicitly calls for specialist exchanges; pan-EU mobility programmes (Erasmus+ Staff Mobility, COST Actions) can be integrated to multiply learning.

• Shared Capacity-Building Catalogue – A centralised repository of training modules, governance templates and toolkits reduces duplication and accelerates learning across Member States.

3. Alignment with Flagship EU Policies

• European Research Area (ERA) Policy Agenda Action 1 – Enable Open Science – Direct contribution strengthens national ERA Roadmaps, increasing political support and co-funding.

• Digital Europe Programme (DEP) – Interoperable, standards-based e-publishing platforms dovetail with DEP objectives on data spaces, cybersecurity and advanced digital skills.

• European Green Deal & SDGs – OA accelerates knowledge diffusion critical for green & social-impact research; Green Deal projects become natural content pipelines.

• EU Multilingualism Strategy – Institutional OA publishers are well-placed to offer multilingual abstracts/metadata, reinforcing linguistic diversity and inclusive science.

4. Regulatory Harmonisation Benefits

• GDPR-Compliant User Management – A single data-protection framework across 27 countries simplifies legal compliance.

• EU Copyright & DSM Directive (2019/790) – Harmonised exceptions for text-and-data-mining facilitate machine-readable OA corpora.

• Plan S & cOAlition S Alignment – Conformity with emerging pan-European OA mandates future-proofs publishing services.

5. Access to Europe’s Innovation & Research Ecosystem

• European Open Science Cloud (EOSC) – Tight integration with EOSC repositories/on-boarding services ensures persistent identifiers (PIDs), FAIR data and long-term preservation.

• Top-Tier Research Infrastructures – Synergies with e-infra clusters (EUDAT, OpenAIRE, OPERAS, CLARIN) provide ready-made tech stacks, APIs and user communities.

• Living Labs & Innovation Hubs – European Digital Innovation Hubs (EDIHs) can beta-test new publishing tools (AI-based editorial assistants, XML workflows, peer-review innovations).

6. Funding Synergies & Leveraging Instruments

• Cascade Funding – The topic allows financial support to third parties (max €60 000) enabling micro-grants to small institutional publishers in widening countries.

• Complementarity with Other EU Funds –

• Digital Europe (DEP): advanced digital platforms & cybersecurity.

• Erasmus+/Marie Skłodowska-Curie: training, summer schools.

• ERDF/Interreg: regional infrastructure upgrades.

• InvestEU Social Investment Window: scaling sustainable non-profit publishing services.

• National Recovery & Resilience Plans (RRF) – Many include digital and R&I components that can co-finance hardware or human capital costs.

7. Scale & Impact Potential

• Network Effects – Each new institutional publisher raises the value of the network exponentially through shared discovery layers and cross-promotion.

• Standardised KPIs – EU-wide metrics (citations, alt-metrics, FAIR compliance) enable benchmarking and continuous improvement.

• Policy Uptake – Outputs can feed directly into European Commission monitoring (Open Science Monitor, ERA Scoreboard), amplifying visibility.

8. Territorial Cohesion & Widening Participation

• Bridging Excellence Gaps – Institutions in EU13/Widening countries gain free or low-cost publishing pathways, boosting their international profile.

• Reducing APC Inequities – Diamond OA removes pay-to-publish barriers, supporting under-funded researchers and disciplines (SSH, emerging fields).

9. Sustainability & Risk Mitigation at EU Scale

• Shared Long-Term Preservation – Collaboration with EU-certified Trusted Digital Repositories (TDRs) mitigates risk of local budget cuts.

• Diverse Revenue Mix – EU-level marketplace for value-added services (XML conversion, language editing) diversifies income beyond single-institution budgets.

• Governance Resilience – A federated governance model (e.g., AISBL under Belgian law) protects operations from national political shifts.

10. Actionable Recommendations for Applicants

1. Build a tripartite consortium combining:

• Library publishing networks (OPERAS, LIBER members)

• Technical infrastructure providers (OpenAIRE, PKP, OJS hosting centres)

• National research assessment bodies to ensure uptake.

2. Map & segment at least 300 European institutional publishers; create a service-tier matrix (training, tools, preservation, certification).

3. Establish an EU Competence Centre for Non-Profit OA Publishing with:

• Help-desk & matchmaking service

• Repository of multilingual training assets (MOOCs, webinars)

• Certification scheme aligned with Plan S and COPE.

4. Allocate ≥15 % of budget for third-party grants to onboard under-resourced publishers, meeting the €60 000 cap per entity.

5. Synchronise metadata with EOSC & national CRIS systems (CERIF, RIOXX) to guarantee discoverability in research assessment exercises.

6. Design a Sustainability Roadmap referencing InvestEU Social Investment or membership fee models post-CSA.

11. Key Success Metrics (EU-Wide)

• ≥200 institutional publishers onboarded & adhering to common quality standards.

• ≥2 000 staff trained across 27 Member States & Associated Countries.

• ≥50 % increase in FAIR-compliant OA outputs indexed in EOSC.

• Formal recognition of diamond OA outputs in at least 10 national research-assessment frameworks.

Conclusion

Operating at EU level multiplies outreach, efficiency and credibility, transforming scattered, under-resourced institutional publishing initiatives into a cohesive, trusted European knowledge commons. Projects that exploit the above advantages will not only score high in Horizon assessments (excellence, impact, quality of implementation) but will also leave a durable footprint on Europe’s open-science landscape.