  A detailed study of the heavy quark h=c,b,... contributions to deeply virtual
Compton scattering is performed at both the amplitude and the cross section
level, and their phenomenological relevance is discussed. For this purpose I
calculate the lowest order off-forward photon-gluon scattering amplitude with a
massive quark loop and the corresponding hard scattering coefficients. In a
first numerical analysis these fixed order perturbation theory results are
compared with the conventional intrinsic "massless" parton approach considering
generalized parton distributions for the heavy quarks. The differences between
these two prescriptions can be quite significant, especially at small
skewedness where the massless approach largely overestimates the deeply virtual
Compton scattering cross section.
