FAQ

To be eligible to publish in ORE, at least one author of the submitted article must meet at least one of the following criteria:

• Be affiliated with an Open Research Europe funding institute, OR
• Be affiliated with an institution based in a country covered by one of the Open Research Europe funders, OR
• Be employed by the European Commission or by one of the European Union's agencies and the article must be resulting from their employment duties, OR
• Be involved in a running or finished research project from the European Commission and the article must be a result of that project.

The eligible author must have an active and verifiable institutional email account. The article must be original work.

Learn more about eligibility.

ORE’s editorial function is in-house. External suppliers support parts of the publishing workflows including prepublication checks, typesetting, and liaison with peer reviewers.

The Scientific Advisory Board also support editorial matters on a case-by-case basis, bringing their research-community perspective.

ORE combines trusted publishing, open evaluation, and community-driven innovation.

ORE is designed to help researchers share their work openly, rapidly, and responsibly. Backed by a partnership of national research funders, research performing organisations, the European Commission, and CERN, ORE offers a trusted publishing environment built to serve the research community.

Publishing on ORE gives researchers access to:

• A trusted, community-supported platform backed by leading public research organisations across Europe.
• No author-facing fees, making high-quality open access publishing free for eligible authors.
• Rigorous pre-publication checks, ensuring quality of published outputs.
• Fast dissemination, allowing new findings to be shared without unnecessary delays.
• A transparent peer review process, where reviewer reports and identities are published alongside the article, fostering constructive dialogue and accountability.
• Freedom to publish the research that matters, with authors deciding what to share rather than editorial priorities determining what is considered publishable.
• Support for a wide range of research outputs, including research articles, methods papers, software, data notes, replication studies, negative findings, and confirmatory results.
• Greater visibility and credibility, supported by open peer review, rich metadata, and a robust technical infrastructure.
• Versioning and citability, with every article version permanently linked and independently citable.
• Support for FAIR data practices, helping research data remain findable, accessible, interoperable, and reusable.

Learn more about the benefits of publishing on ORE.

ORE welcomes a broad range of research contributions.

ORE publishes a wide range of research outputs, from research articles and methods papers to software tools, data papers, reviews, and other scholarly contributions.

The platform welcomes research findings regardless of outcome, including positive, negative, null, replication, and refutation studies. The focus is on scientific quality, transparency, and contribution to knowledge.

Accepted article types

See the Article Guidelines for a full list of publication types.

Publishing on ORE comes at no cost to eligible authors.

Researchers who are eligible to publish in ORE can do so without paying article processing charges (APCs) or any other author-facing fees.

The publication costs are shared by the funders and research organisations that support ORE as members, helping to create a publishing system that is open, sustainable, and accessible to researchers.

ORE combines rapid publication with rigorous checks, and transparent peer review.

ORE is a peer-reviewed publishing platform. Unlike a pre-print server or a repository, ORE offers editorial services, including rigorous pre-publication editorial checks and peer review by experts.

ORE follows a Publish, Review, Curate (PRC) model, which allows research to be shared quickly while ensuring rigorous assessment through open peer review. After passing a series of pre-publication checks, articles are published rapidly and then proceed automatically to invited open peer review.

This model increases transparency, accelerates dissemination, and separates the act of publishing from evaluation, allowing multiple layers of assessment over time. By combining rapid sharing with structured review and expert curation, PRC provides a more dynamic and complete representation of the evolving scholarly record.

Learn more about ORE’s publishing model.

ORE connects research through rich and open metadata.

High-quality metadata is essential for discoverability, transparency, and reuse.

Every article version published on ORE receives its own DOI, and peer review reports are also assigned persistent identifiers. This creates clear links between publications, reviews, authors, funders, and research outputs.

In the submission process, key metadata, such as funder IDs and grant DOIs, is collected which further enhances the discoverability, traceability, and interoperability of the research published on the platform. Learn more about open metadata at ORE.

ORE’s new platform is built on Open Journal Systems (OJS), a free, open-source software for the management of peer-reviewed scholarly publishing, managed by the Public Knowledge Project (PKP). If you’ve already published in or reviewed for a journal that uses OJS then the infrastructure will look very familiar to you.

The system is intuitive and it’s easy to track the stage of your submission at any time. OJS is used by over 55,000 journals across the world and PKP provide some great community resources. Here are some tutorials that might be of help:

• Learning OJS for authors;
• Learning OJS for reviewers;
• How to track your submission;
• How to respond to a review request.

Peer review at ORE

Peer review of articles takes place after publication. Once an article has passed pre-publication checks and is published, expert reviewers are formally invited to review using our open peer review model.

This process is very transparent: all identities are visible; reviewers interact with the editor, other reviewers, and authors; review reports are published alongside the article; and post-publication commenting is open to all including readers.

This approach makes the assessment process visible, accountable, and part of the scholarly record itself.

Learn more about peer review at ORE.

The selection and overall review process is managed by The Editorial Hub, our dedicated peer review partner, and overseen by ORE’s editorial team. The ORE Scientific Board provides independent review and advice on matters concerning suspected misconduct and transparency.

Reviewers must meet the following criteria:

• Expertise: at least three publications within the last three years on the key topics of the study presented and/or methods used;
• Experience: with appropriate qualifications and appointment at a recognised institution;
• Independence: no professional, personal, or financial ties with the authors and their work, with full disclosure of any potential conflict of interest.

Full details of these criteria are available on the webpage explaining how reviewing works.

When submitting, authors may suggest individual reviewers who meet these criteria. Suggestions are considered but not guaranteed.

ORE’s publication workflow means that a manuscript is published after prechecks but before peer review. To support transparency and bring clarity, the platform uses clear visual cues to inform readers on the status of a publication.

The stage of an article is very clear thanks to the use of badges that either state “AWAITING PEER REVIEW” or “PEER REVIEW PROCESS COMPLETED”. There is also a badge to indicate if an article has been revised.

Once peer review is completed an article receives one of three statuses that are clearly displayed on the article page alongside the written review report. These statuses declare: “APPROVED”, “REVISIONS REQUESTED”, or “NOT APPROVED”. Learn more about what these review statuses mean.

ORE research is designed to be discoverable.

All ORE publications are indexed by Google Scholar.

Articles that successfully complete peer review (i.e. it has received at least two Approved peer review reports, or one Approved plus two Approved with Reservations reviews) become eligible for inclusion in a range of bibliographic databases and indexing services.

ORE is currently indexed in over 20 different databases, e.g., Scopus and PubMed Central, helping to maximise the discoverability of your work.

See the full list of indexing services.

ORE focuses on the value of research, not the reputation of the venue.

Open Research Europe does not and will not ask to have an Impact Factor. The European Commission and an increasing number of funding agencies, institutions, and research organisations are keen to support a broader view of a researcher’s output – and that it is the intrinsic value of what is published, shared and re-used, that is important as opposed to the venue, journal, or platform where an article is published.

Open Research Europe supports the responsible use of research-related metrics and its application to research assessment – following, among other, the Leiden Manifesto and the DORA Declaration.

Each article published on Open Research Europe includes an article-level metrics page demonstrating the individual article’s reach and interest. It also includes traditional indicators such as article citation data.

Articles published on Open Research Europe are associated with a variety of quantitative and qualitative metrics to provide open, article-level information, allowing the article to be evaluated on its own merit.

Transparent reviewing of all articles through open peer review also provides an important assessment at article level, in addition to more traditional quantitative data such as views, downloads, and citations.

Open Research Europe aims to encourage the publication of high-quality research and be recognised and valued for that by all the stakeholders and not only the funding bodies and academic institutions.

Every submission undergoes rigorous checks before publication.

Before an article is published, it is reviewed for compliance with ORE's publishing policies and standards.

Pre-publication checks include, among other things:

• Author eligibility
• Research ethics and integrity
• Plagiarism screening
• Language and readability
• Image integrity checks
• Data and reporting requirements
• Compliance with platform policies

These checks help ensure that all published content meets the standards expected by the research community.

Learn more about pre-publication checks.

ORE believes in the responsible use of artificial intelligence (AI) in research. Authors must ensure that the use of any AI or AI-supported tools uphold relevant ethical standards.

Acceptable uses of AI include grammar and spell checking, translation assistance, article formatting, and data analysis support.

Full disclosure of AI usage is required at submission, including a statement from the authors taking full responsibility for the accuracy, originality, and integrity of the content.

Read ORE’s full policy on the responsible use of AI.

ORE’s detailed prepublication checks screen for AI using specialised tools that identify the use of AI in both text and images.

AI usage must be declared at submission and failure to do so, following ORE’s policy on the responsible usage of AI, will result in rejection of the manuscript.

ORE’s eligibility criteria provide an additional screening layer. Authors are required to deposit the research data behind their publication in a repository together with information needed to replicate, validate, and analyse the data. This provides material against which claims can be examined, beyond the manuscript alone.