Support and Landscape

Each of the Finnish universities has their own local Open Science Support Unit, typically based at the university libraries and research services.

Responsible research coordination at Federation of Finnish Learned Societies together with the expert panels is working on national structure for RDM support and training.

National Initiatives

The Finnish model for Open Science coordination involves universities, polytechnics, research institutes, funding bodies, libraries and archives. The coordination is supported by The Federation of Finnish Learned Societies (TSV) with funding from the Ministry of Education and Culture.

The coordination is based on collaboration between working groups, expert groups and strategy group. In the centre of the coordination work are fourOpen Science Expert Panels: Culture of open scholarship, Open data, Open access and Open education.

One result of this cooperation is the Declaration for Open Science and Research 2020-2025. The declaration provides a common direction for the development of the research community. The declaration outlines a vision, where open science and research are seamlessly integrated into researchers' everyday work.

Open Science coordination in Finland participates actively in many open science networks in Europe and globally (eg.CoNOSC and EOSC).

Responsible research is present in the activities and communication of the TSV and the research support bodies associated with it: the Open Science Coordination, the Publication Forum (JUFO), the Committee for Public Information (TJNK) and the Finnish National Board on Research Integrity TENK.

Open Science Policy

National Policy

The Ministry of Education and Culture as part of the Government steers and finances the activities of higher education institutions that are autonomous actors. The objectives of science policy include "to bolster the research infrastructure" and "to safeguard the openness of research and science". The Research and Innovation Council, advisory body chaired by the Prime Minister, adopted its vision and roadmap in October 2017. The roadmap reaches to 2030 and states that “openness of science will be promoted on several fronts”.

The Finnish research community has jointly created a Declaration for Open Science and Research. The declaration was prepared by the Open Science Coordination in Finland and was approved by the National Open Science and Research Steering Group in December 2019. The declaration provides a common direction for the development of the research community.

The declaration outlines a vision, where open science and research are seamlessly integrated in researchers' everyday work. The declaration defines four objectives that specify how openness will become part of the daily life of researchers and scientists:

(1) research culture,

(2) open access to research publications,

(3) open access to research data and methods, and

(4) open education and educational resources as promoted by the research community.

In addition to the Declaration for Open Science and Research, there are policies of open science and research that outline in detail the strategic principles, objectives and action plans necessary to achieve the objectives set out in the declaration. You can see the current status of the policy documents on the Open Science Coordination's website.

On a practical level, the Open Science in Finland is also significantly affected by FinELib's negotiations with scientific publishers (see FinELib’s policy on open access and transformative agreements) and the Ministry of Education and Culture's additional funding for open access publications: in the new funding model from 2021, open access publications will be rewarded a coefficient of 1.2.

Funder policy

The Academy of Finland is a key source of funding for scientific research in Finland. In its policy on open science, the Academy of Finland states: “We require that the scientific publications on the results of Academy-funded research projects are open access, and that the research data produced by the projects are made widely available. The degrees of data openness may justifiably vary, ranging from fully open to strictly confidential.” The Academy is also part of coalition S, an international consortium of research funders that promotes open access to research publications in accordance with the Plan S initiative.

Business Finland is the Finnish government organization for innovation funding and trade, travel and investment promotion. In its Funding terms and conditions for research organizations, Business Finland states: “The Funder requires that the publications resulting of the project work and results and the research data must be made openly available following the beneficiary’s internal guidelines for open access.” See the funding terms and conditions of Business Finland.

Kone Foundation is an independent non-profit organization funding research and the arts. In its Ethical considerations, reuse of research materials and open access, it states: “We recommend that data collected during research funded by Kone Foundation be archived for possible future use. – – We recommend that researchers we have been funding make their research results freely available to all. – – When it funds projects, the Foundation can also provide funding for the processing fees of open access journals.”

Institutional Policy

Atlas of Open Science and Research in Finland 2019 is an evaluation of the openness of Finnish research organisations, research-funding organisations, academic and cultural institutes abroad and learned societies and academies completed by the Ministry of Education and Culture. It states about the policies of:

publications: “About 80 % of the higher education institutions have principles which recommend or encourage the use of open-access channels for publishing and more than 60 % require the use of open-access channels. Nearly all (93 %) of the universities and 88 % of the universities of applied sciences have recommendations on self-archiving publications in institutional or other repositories. Of the HEIs, 60 % require self-archiving research publications and has a support process place for it.”

methods: “Compared to the previous evaluation, there has been significant improvements in developing the principles for the openness of research methods (including algorithms and code). Openness of research methods is surprisingly well managed in policies and almost all of the universities and more than 70 % of the universities of applied sciences have policies and principles for this. Almost half of the universities and about 40 % of the universities of applied sciences require openness of research methods.”

research data: “The availability, use and licensing of research data is also very well managed. Every university has a data policy and implementation plan recommending openness of research data, whereas eight universities of applied sciences have not yet set principles for open research data. Ten out of thirteen universities and almost half of the universities of applied sciences require open licensing of research data and use of agreed open repositories." ROARMAP lists 33 open access mandates in Finland, either on the funder or on the institutional level, and OpenDOAR lists 22 Finnish repositories.