Beneficiaries of a Proof of Concept Grant must meet the same obligations concerning gender balance, open access and intellectual property rights as recipients of ERC main frontier research grants (see sections 1.7.2 Gender Balance, 1.7.3 Open Science, and 1.7.4 Intellectual Property Rights (IPR) of the ERC Work Programme 2026).

7. Open Science:

Open science is a core principle of the ERC. The ERC is committed to the principle of open access to the published output of research, including in particular, peer-reviewed articles and monographs. It also supports the basic principle of open access to research data and data-related products such as computer code, algorithms, software, workflows, protocols or any other forms of research output. The ERC considers that providing free online access to all these materials can be the most effective way of ensuring that the results of the research it funds can be accessed, read and used as the basis for further advancement.

Under Horizon Europe, beneficiaries of ERC grants must ensure immediate open access to all peer-reviewed scientific publications relating to their results as set out in the Model Grant Agreement used for ERC actions. Open access has to be provided with full re-use rights. Beneficiaries must ensure that they or the authors retain sufficient intellectual property rights to comply with their open access requirements. Publishing costs can be considered as eligible costs provided that the publishing venue (e.g. journal, book) is fully open access.

In addition, beneficiaries of ERC grants funded under this ERC Work Programme 2026 will be covered by the provisions on research data management as set out in the Model Grant Agreement used for ERC actions. In particular, whenever a project generates research data, beneficiaries are required to manage it in line with the principles of findability, accessibility, interoperability, and reusability as described by the FAIR principles initiative, and establish a data management plan within the first six months of project implementation. Open access to research data should be ensured under the principle ‘as open as possible, as closed as necessary’. These provisions are designed to facilitate access, re-use and preservation of the research data generated during the ERC funded research work.

Šim konkursam nav īpašu prasību papildus programmas vispārējiem noteikumiem — atbilstību nosaka darba programmas B pielikums (valstis, konsorcija sastāvs) un pieteikšanās modelis augstāk.