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Research funders and open science

Research Council of Finland and open science

The Research Council of Finland requires projects it funds to make their research outputs open. Decision-making bodies take into account the openness of the publication plan and the section presenting the opening of research data. Research methods should also be disclosed as much as possible. The Council currently does not have guidelines for the openness of research methods, but the transparency of methods can be considered in decision-making and evaluation as an aspect that enhances the quality of the application.

In research outputs funded by the Research Council of Finland or utilizing its research infrastructures, it must be stated:

  • that the research was conducted with funding from the Research Council of Finland
  • the decision number of the funding. This information must be added to the metadata of the electronic publication or dataset
  • Publications produced with funding from the Strategic Research Council (SRC) must always include a mention of the fact that the research has been conducted with funding from the Strategic Research Council established within the Research Council of Finland
  • In the case of consortium funding, the scientific publication shall mention the decision numbers of the consortium PI, the subproject and the subprojects involved in producing the publication.

See the Research Council of Finland's pages Research output metadata and the Research Council policies on open science.

Research Council of Finland: publications

Peer-reviewed articles

  • must be immediately available openly
  • the opening should be done in accordance with the principles of Plan S and the national policy for the open access to scholarly publications. This is required for projects whose call opened after January 1, 2021.
    • The publication archives of all Finnish universities and state research institutes comply with these principles.
    • The openness required for calls opened before January 1, 2021, differs somewhat from the open access definition and the funding method for implementation that the Council adopted in its funding terms on January 1, 2021. Refer to the funding terms of your funding decision for further instructions.
  • for opening, the Creative Commons Attribution CC BY 4.0 license should primarily be used. Exceptionally, licenses CC BY-SA 4.0, CC0, and CC BY-ND are also permitted.
  • publication can be done by:
    • publishing the article in a scientific journal that operates on the basis of immediate openness in accordance with Plan S. Finding such journals is easiest with the Journal Checker Tool (Video on the Journal Checker Tool).
    • Self-archiving the publication (Version of Record) or Author’s Accepted Manuscript version in an open access repository that supports immediate openness and operates in accordance with Plan S, such as the University of Turku's UTUCRIS. If the publisher does not agree to immediate self-archiving, the article can be made open after an embargo period: a maximum of 12 months for humanities and social sciences, and a maximum of 6 months for other sciences.
    • publishing articles in a scientific journal supported by a transformative agreement between a publisher committed to promoting immediate open access and a representative of the scientific community (e.g. the FinELib Consortium or an individual research organisation) or in a scientific journal committed to promoting immediate open access (transformative journal). The agreements must be valid during the period 1 January 2021–31 December 2024.
  • regardless of the method of the opening, articles must be archived in a repository that ensures long-term preservation and free open access. The repository can be either maintained by a research organization or be a discipline-specific international archive.
  • Opening cannot be done using the hybrid model, where an article in an otherwise subscription-based journal is purchased to be open access.

Conference articles and monographs are also encouraged to be published openly.

Basic guidelines for currently valid funding terms and the Research Council’s activities to promote open access to scientific publications: Open access to scientific publications and guide Open access publishing.

Research Council of Finland: open research data

Principal Investigator must ensure that the research data funded by the Council is made available:

  • as soon as possible after the publication of the results
  • in accordance with the FAIR principles
  • in an archive or storage service significant for the organization or the field of science
  • with attention to the licensing of the data when making it available

For justified reasons, the data may have varying degrees of openness, ranging from fully open to confidential. The publisher of the data must ensure that publishing does not violate the Finnish Act on the Openness of Government Activities, the Data Protection Act, or the Copyright Act.
If the data cannot be made open, its metadata must be stored in a national or international search service

See further Researech Council of Finland: Data management and openness.

Guidelines for managing research data can be found in the guide Research data management.

Do you need help with commenting on data management issues for the Council's call? Contact: openutu@utu.fi, and the university's research support experts from various fields are at your service.