Finnish Open Access Working Group (FinnOA)

FinnOA is an unofficial body promoting open access to scholarly literature in Finland. The group was founded in April, 2003. The members represent faculty and research staff, scholarly publishers and libraries. The current chairman of the group is Marjut Salokannel (University of Helsinki; marjut.salokannel [at] helsinki.fi).

Recent Developments in Finland
 

Open Access Self-Archiving Mandate at the University of Helsinki
By a unanimous decision of the university management team the University of Helsinki requires that researchers working at the University deposit copies of their research articles published in academic research journals in the open repository of the University. This decision applies to articles approved for publication from 1st January 2010 onwards. See also:
Open Access Self-Archiving Mandate at the University of Helsinki, Finland (Press release, 26.5.2008, pdf)
Open access to research publications in the University of Helsinki (University's OA policy, 26.5.2008, pdf)
OA mandate at the U of Helsinki (Peter Suber, Open Access News, June 5, 2008)
August 25, 2008

The Finnish Council of University Rectors signs the Berlin declaration
The Finnish Council of University Rectors decided on May 23, 2006, to sign the Berlin Declaration on Open Access to Knowledge in the Sciences and Humanities. The council is a non-governmental association representing the heads of all 21 Finnish universities.
May 30, 2006

New open access infrastructure initiatives in Finland funded by the Ministry of Education
In April 2006, a new initiative, OA-JES, was started. It is coordinated by FinnOA and is a collaboration between the University of Helsinki, Helsinki University of Technology, the National Library of Finland, and the Federation of Finnish Learned Societies. The objectives of the initiative are: 1) to give aid to universities and research institutes in setting up institutional repositories; 2) to inform researchers about how open access is a part of the research process; and 3) to provide an easy-to-use platform for the open access journals of Finnish learned societies.

The Ministry of Education will also be funding a digital infrastructure initiative in the centre campus of the University of Helsinki, starting in 2007. The aims will be twofold: 1) to support scholarly open access publishing, which will include repository services both for researchers and for scholarly journals of the departments, and 2) to build a supportive infrastructure for the accessibility and preservation of primary research materials of the departments. The idea is to provide faculty with a comprehensive set of services for their own publications and research materials.
May 23, 2006

The Open Access Recommendations of the Ministry of Education
The recommendations issued by the Open access scholarly publishing committee are addressed to research funding agencies, research organisations, and to scientific publishers. The committee recommends that higher education institutions and research institutes set up open access online archives in which researchers can deposit copies of their publications. Furthermore, funding agencies should accept open access author charges as research project expenditure, and learned societies should offer the scientific articles published in their serials to open access distribution as soon after publication as possible. See the abstract and the full text (PDF).
April 24, 2005

Editors | Hosted by TSV – The Federation of Finnish Learned Societies

Updated 06/11/2008