HAL — Hyper Articles en Ligne
Overview
HAL is the French national open-access publication archive, operated by the CCSD (Centre pour la Communication Scientifique Directe), a joint service unit of CNRS, INRIA, and INRAE. Founded in 2001, it is the primary mandatory deposit platform for open access to French publicly funded research publications, serving as the national infrastructure implementing the open access requirements of Ouvrir la Science, ANR Open Science Policy, CNRS Open Science, and Inserm Open Science. It accepts preprints, postprints, and full-text publications in all scientific disciplines, with deposits timestamped and permalinked. HAL integrates with European open access infrastructure via OpenAIRE, which harvests HAL metadata for EU compliance reporting.
Institutional Portals
HAL operates institutional portals for major French research organisations, each with their own branding while sharing the same underlying infrastructure. HAL-ICM (https://hal.science/ICM) is the Paris Brain Institute portal. HAL-CNRS (https://hal.science/CNRS) is the CNRS institutional portal. HAL-Inserm (https://hal.inserm.fr) serves Inserm. HAL-Sorbonne Université is at https://hal.sorbonne-universite.fr and HAL-Pasteur (https://hal.pasteur.fr) serves Institut Pasteur.
Open Access Mandates Driving HAL Deposits
Ouvrir la Science mandates open access to publications via HAL for all French publicly funded research, set out in the national plans of 2018 and 2021-2024 and carried forward by the French Open Science Strategy for 2026-2033. The ANR Open Science Policy requires immediate open access deposit in HAL or a discipline-specific repository for all ANR-funded publications from 2022. CNRS Open Science and Inserm Open Science both set institutional mandates for their respective researchers. Horizon Europe open access requirements are satisfied via HAL through OpenAIRE harvesting.
Planned development
The Ouvrir la Science strategy for 2026-2033 sets a target of full deposit of French articles in HAL and names three avenues for its next roadmap: displaying the editorial status of publications, displaying Crossref DOIs, and exchanging information with ORCID. To move past the open access plateau reported in 2026, it also encourages deposit of preprints and of accepted manuscripts under Article 30 of the Loi pour une République numérique.
HAL and the French Open Science Infrastructure
HAL is the publication layer of the French open science stack, sitting alongside Recherche Data Gouv (data), Software Heritage (code), and OPIDoR (DMPs).
Connections
- endorsedBy: CoreTrustSeal
- relatedTo: OpenAIRE (HAL metadata harvested for EU open access compliance)
- relatedTo: COAR (OAI-PMH harvesting and Next Generation Repositories protocol alignment)
Resources
- https://hal.science
- https://hal.science/ICM (HAL-ICM portal)
- https://www.ccsd.cnrs.fr (CCSD — HAL operator)
- https://doi.org/10.52949/94 (French Open Science Strategy, SO5 on academic publishing)