Open Science is endorsed and actively encouraged by many research funding institutions. This particularly applies in the field of Open Access. In the EU, Open Science is promoted by the European Commission through funding programmes. There are also many promotional activities by national governments and research organisations.

Here you will find a summary of information about the Open Science activities of the EU and activities in Germany. The Open Science Overview in Europe from the OpenAIRE project is one starting point for activities in other European countries.

European Commission

European activities aim to make Open Access and Open Data the standard in publicly funded European research projects (and in the member states). The European Commission promotes Open Access, for example through its current funding programme for research and innovation, Horizon Europe, and its predecessor, Horizon 2020. An Open Science policy in Horizon Europe makes Open Access publication mandatory, and Open Science principles run through the entire programme. The Factsheet: Open Science in Horizon Europe provides an overview of the funding programme. Research data from EU-funded projects must be handled in line with the FAIR principles, which includes submitting data management plans. The data must also be made available as Open Data unless legitimate interests prevent this.

Key projects of the Commission include:

• The development of a European Open Science Cloud (EOSC). Linked with national metadata databases, it is intended to form an upstream digital infrastructure for publishing, collecting, finding and using European research data. It is being prepared intensively through various pilot projects (EU projects such as eEOSC, GO FAIR and OpenAIRE).
• In 2021, the European Commission launched Open Research Europe, a free Open Access publishing platform for all scientific disciplines. Since autumn 2026, it has been operated by CERN and funded jointly with a consortium of research funders from eleven European countries. As a result, it is no longer open only to EU-funded projects. All researchers at institutions in the participating countries, including Germany, can now publish there.

Open Science funding in Germany

German Research Foundation

The German Research Foundation (DFG) supports Open Science through a wide range of measures. Among other things, it has set up the Open Access Publication Costs funding programme, which covers author fees for publishing articles in Open Access journals. It also supports the Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ), a directory of high-quality Open Access journals. Through its infrastructure funding, the DFG contributes significantly to the handling of research data, for example by supporting the development or expansion of data repositories. The DFG is also a member of the Open Research Europe consortium, so all researchers at German institutions can publish there free of charge.

The DFG has published the following information and guidelines on Open Science:

• The paper "Open Science as Part of Research Culture" summarises the DFG's positions on Open Science.
• The position paper “Academic Publishing as a Foundation and Area of Leverage for Research Assessment: Challenges and Fields of Action” (PDF) addresses current challenges in scientific publishing such as market structures, business models and publication fraud, and identifies corresponding areas for action.
• The paper “Funding Information Infrastructures for Research. A DFG Strategy Paper (March 2018)” (PDF) outlines the DFG's position on Open Access and research data.
• The DFG has summarised further information on Open Access on its website.
• Regarding research data, the DFG has published Guidelines on Handling Research Data.
• In its Guidelines for Safeguarding Good Research Practice Open Science is for example referenced in “Guideline 13: Providing public access to research results”.
• The DFG also operates the portal “Research Integrity” where researchers can learn about the guidelines and annotations, including subject-specific comments, case studies, FAQs and other information.

Federal Ministry of Education and Research

The Federal Ministry of Research, Technology and Space (Bundesministerium für Forschung, Technologie und Raumfahrt / BMFTR) supports Open Access through regulatory and funding measures. The funding measures include the fact that funds for Open Access fees can also be applied for retroactively via the BMFTR. From a regulatory perspective, the accessibility of publications is supported by the introduction of an “indispensable secondary publication right for authors of scientific articles”. Under this legal basis, researchers can make their journal articles publicly publicly available after a period of twelve months. In addition, the BMFTR supports research on the participation of non-scientists (Citizen Science) in research projects.

The BMFTR has published the following information on Open Science:

• The Open Access strategy (German) for Germany presents the promotion of various Open Access routes (green and gold Open Access) by the BMFTR.
• In its Action Plan Research Data (German) the BMFTR has defined measures to strengthen data sovereignty and data infrastructures.
• You can find further information from the BMFTR on Open Access on the BMFTR websites Bildung-Forschung.digital (German).