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Turku University Library

Open Access Publishing

Research Council of Finland Calls for Funding Proposals

The Research Council of Finland requires that all Council funded projects commit to ensuring immediate open access to peer-reviewed articles published about the research results in accordance with Plan S principles and Finland’s national policy for open access to scholarly publications.

The research plan (item 4.3 - Open science) must include a publication plan that has been drafted considering the Council ’s open access requirement. This particularly applies to peer-reviewed articles, but the Research Council of Finland also recommends open access for other types of publications. Instructions regarding these are being prepared by the Council.

Open access can be implemented by:

  1. Publishing in Open Access Journals.
  2. Self-archiving the scientific publication (peer-reviewed final draft, author accepted version) an open access institutional or discipline-specific repository that supports immediate access and complies with Plan S. One example is University of Turku’s UTUCRIS. If the publisher refuses immediate self-archiving, the article can be made open access by self-archiving with an embargo (up to 12 months for social sciences and humanities, up to 6 months for other scientific disciplines).
  3. Publishing in a scientific journal supported by a transformative agreement between the university / a representative of the scientific community and a publisher committed to promoting immediate open access, or in scientific journal committed to promoting immediate open access. The agreements must be valid during the period 1 January 2021–31 December 2024. More information about the agreements in the University of Turku: Discounts on Article Processing Charges.

Peer-reviewed scientific articles should be published under a global use licence that guarantees free immediate access. The licence must also guarantee the free redistribution and reproduction of article contents. The Council requires the use of Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) 4.0. There are three other Creative Commons licenses that can be used in some cases: Research Council of Finland - Open Access to scientific publications (> Licence use in publishing).

How to find an appropriate journal or a publishing platform

The easiest way to write an Research Council of Finland applicable publication plan is to check whether a journal or publishing platform is compliant with Plan S with the Journal Checker Tool, a database developed by cOAlition S. For Finnish scientific journals, the Council exceptionally approves journals in which all peer-reviewed articles are published in a manner that is compliant with Plan S, but other published material is not fully open access.

Video about how to use the Journal Checker tool: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GzUzeZVA_U8 (duration 1:20).

NOTE! Peer-reviewed articles produced in Council funded projects may not be published through the so-called hybrid model, where individual articles published in subscription-based journals are made open access on payment.

Budgeting for publication costs

According to the Council’s funding terms and conditions, the costs of making peer-reviewed articles immediately available are included in the overheads of the research organisations and thus form a part of the costs of the basic facilities they provide. These costs must therefore be taken into account in the calculation of the overheads percentage, and the researcher does not need to take care of them as part of his research costs. 

Read more: Research Council of Finland’s policies on open science – open access to scientific publication

Open research methods

The Council requires open access to research methods where possible. Enabling open access to research methods depends not only on the method itself but also on the practices of the discipline in question. The Council has as yet no guidance on the implementation of open access to research methods. However, reliably implemented open access to methods can be taken into account in the review and decision-making as factors that improve the quality of the application.

Open research data

See instructions in the Research Data guide!

Training and guidance

 

Video: Research Council of Finland call for funding proposals -  publication plan: https://y​outu.be/M9VeojPDib4 (duration 12 min)

Video: Research Council of Finland call for funding proposals - data management: https://youtu.be/kpXl2IHXL7M (duration 16 min)