Japan Just Joined Horizon Europe — Here's How I'm Getting Open-Science Ready with CV HAL and Zenodo

TL;DR

• On 30 July 2026, Japan officially became an associated country to Horizon Europe, the EU's €93.5B research and innovation programme.
• Japanese universities, labs and companies can now lead consortia and receive EU funding directly under Pillar II (€52.4B).
• Horizon Europe comes with mandatory open-science rules. I use CV HAL and Zenodo, two of only five repositories rated fully "compliance-ready", to stay prepared.

What happened?

Japan is now the 23rd associated country to Horizon Europe and, with about 123 million people, the most populous one.

Date	Milestone
22 Dec 2025	European Commission and the Government of Japan conclude negotiations
Jan 2026	Transitional arrangements let Japanese entities apply to Pillar II calls
30 Jul 2026	Association agreement enters into force

The association covers Pillar II: Global Challenges and European Industrial Competitiveness, the largest part of the programme. It funds multinational projects in health, digital, climate, energy, mobility, food and the bioeconomy.

What actually changes?

Before, Japan mostly took part as a "third country". You could join a consortium, but you usually had to bring your own money.

Now Japanese organisations participate on equal terms with EU member states. That means you can:

• Coordinate a Horizon Europe project, not just join one
• Receive EU funding directly
• Keep accessing the parts already open to third countries (Excellent Science, Innovative Europe, Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions)

In return, Japan makes a financial contribution to the programme. In short, we've gone from "please let us in" to "let's build the team ourselves."

The catch: open science is mandatory

In Horizon Europe, open science isn't a nice-to-have. It's a contractual obligation under Article 17 of the Model Grant Agreement. The key requirements:

• Immediate open access: peer-reviewed publications must be open with no embargo. At the latest on publication, deposit the published version or accepted manuscript in a trusted repository.
• Licences and metadata: publications under CC BY (or equivalent), with metadata open under CC0 and FAIR.
• Research data: "as open as possible, as closed as necessary", deposited in a trusted repository by the deadlines in your Data Management Plan (DMP).

So which repository? According to OpenAIRE, only five trusted repositories are currently fully ready for Horizon Europe compliance, and HAL and Zenodo are two of them. That's exactly why I use both.

CV HAL: your researcher business card

HAL is a French open archive. On top of it you can create an IdHAL (a persistent author ID) and a CV HAL (a public, auto-updating publication page). When European partners are scouting collaborators, a clean public profile does a lot of work for you.

With IdHAL you can:

• Merge variants of your name (e.g. "Taro Yamada" and "T. Yamada") and pick a default
• Collect all your work as author or co-author in one place
• Generate a CV whose bibliography updates automatically

You can link your ORCID, plus IDs like IdRef, arXiv and ResearcherID, and add your blog or social profiles. Your CV lives at cv.archives-ouvertes.fr/<your-idhal>.

Setup:

1. Create a HAL account and deposit at least one item (required before creating an IdHAL)
2. Go to "Mon espace > Mon profil" and create your IdHAL (default format: firstname-lastname)
3. Link your ORCID and attach all your name variants
4. Create and publish your CV HAL

Note: your IdHAL can't be changed once set. It also becomes your CV URL, so pick a clean, romanised form.

Zenodo: DOIs for papers, data and code

Zenodo is a general-purpose repository built by CERN and OpenAIRE, funded by the EU for over a decade. It hosts the EU Open Research Repository, which runs automated checks to help you meet Horizon Europe requirements. It already holds more than 128,000 EU-funded outputs.

OpenAIRE's advice: when in doubt, deposit in Zenodo's EU Open Research Repository, and in a subject or institutional repository for visibility. That's my HAL + Zenodo combo.

Why devs will like it:

• GitHub integration: connect a repo, and every GitHub Release gets archived with its own DOI
• Versioning: a Concept DOI for all versions, plus a DOI per version
• Funding metadata: tag deposits with your Horizon Europe project, which makes reporting much easier

For data licences, stick with CC0 or CC BY, as OpenAIRE recommends.

My workflow

Papers go to HAL for credibility and visibility. Code and data go to Zenodo for DOIs and versioning.

1. Use ORCID as the hub and link it to both IdHAL and Zenodo
2. When a paper is accepted, deposit the accepted manuscript in HAL on publication (CC BY)
3. Keep code on GitHub and cut a Release to mint a Zenodo DOI
4. Cite the Zenodo DOIs in the paper's Data/Code Availability statement
5. Share my CV HAL link when reaching out to potential European partners

Pre-flight checklist

• ORCID created, with up-to-date affiliation and works
• IdHAL created and CV HAL published
• Zenodo connected to GitHub
• LICENSE and CITATION.cff added to key repos
• A Data Management Plan (DMP) template ready
• Contacted my institution's research support office about Horizon Europe calls

Wrapping up

Japan's association opens the door to leading projects in a €52.4B funding pillar. The open-science requirements at the entrance are easy to meet if HAL and Zenodo are already part of your routine. Set them up now so you're not scrambling when the next call opens.