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Ouvrir la Science — French National Open Science Policy

Overview

Ouvrir la Science is the French national open science policy, requiring open access to publications, FAIR research data deposit, open source software publication, and the recognition of open science in research assessment. It is set by the ministry responsible for higher education and research, implemented by CoSO, and enforced through funder mandates such as the ANR Open Science Policy, so it governs how French neuroscience groups deposit, publish, and plan their data. Three successive instruments have carried it: the first National Plan for Open Science (2018), the second (2021-2024), and the French Open Science Strategy (Stratégie de science ouverte, SSO) published in September 2026, which runs to 2033 through four-year action plans. See France for the wider French policy landscape.

Statutory basis

The policy builds on the Loi pour une République numérique (loi n° 2016-1321 of 7 October 2016), whose Article 30, codified as Article L. 533-4 of the Code de la recherche, grants researchers the right to deposit publicly funded publications in an open archive after a maximum embargo of 6 or 12 months, overriding publisher contracts. The law creates a right to deposit, and the national instruments and the funder mandates built on them make deposit a requirement.

Requirements

The policy rests on four pillars, set out in the second national plan and carried forward by the strategy: open access to publications via HAL aligned with cOAlition S and Plan S, FAIR research data via Recherche Data Gouv with data management plans via OPIDoR, source code archived in Software Heritage, and the transformation of research practices and incentives.

Commitments of the 2026-2029 action plan

The strategy sets eight objectives, four cross-cutting and four covering research outputs: academic publishing, research data, source code and software, and the transparency of clinical trials. Its first action plan, for 2026 to 2029, includes the following measures.

  • A French national EOSC node is to be established, bringing together the main French open science services.
  • Recherche Data Gouv gains a catalogue of accessible French research data, together with AI-assisted deposit and curation.
  • A national software forge is to provide a sovereign development environment for higher education and research, complemented by a network of Open Source Programme Offices.
  • Software Heritage remains the recommended archive for research source code, and its governance is to be formalised.
  • Full deposit of French articles in HAL is the target, alongside the gradual phase-out of per-article publication charges.
  • A sovereign assistant is to be developed for posting clinical trial results to CTIS in a form that allows their reuse.

National Fund for Open Science

The Fonds National pour la Science Ouverte (FNSO), created alongside the second national plan, is the fund through which the policy pays for open science infrastructure and practice, including diamond open access journals, open source software, and open science training. Its calls for projects are decided by CoSO.

Connections

  • relatedTo: EOSC (the 2026-2029 action plan commits France to establishing a national EOSC node bringing together its main open science services)
  • relatedTo: OpenAIRE (OpenAIRE provides open access compliance monitoring relevant to French mandates)
  • relatedTo: UNESCO Open Science Recommendation (the strategy aligns national policy with the UNESCO recommendation and monitors its implementation)

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