Open Access for Scientific Publications – Research Council of Finland Winter Call 2025

21.11.2024

The Research Council of Finland requires researchers and research projects it funds to make research outputs funded by the Council immediately open upon publication.

Regarding peer-reviewed articles, immediate open access can be achieved through some of the following methods: 

  1. by publishing the article in a Plan-S-compliant scientific journal based on immediate open access. The easiest way to check whether a journal or publishing platform is compliant with Plan S is to use the Journal Checker Tool, a database developed by cOAlition S. For Finnish scientific journals, the Research 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.  
  2. by implementing Open Access through self-archiving. Open access for articles can be done by self-archiving either the Version of Record or the peer-reviewed, publisher-approved version (Author's Accepted Manuscript) in a repository or database that complies with Plan S. 

    If the chosen scientific journal or publishing platform does not declare that they accept immediate self-archiving of either of these versions, the Council encourages the authors to propose making the article openly available immediately, as agreed in the publishing agreement. If the publisher refuses immediate self-archiving, the article can be made open access through self-archiving within an embargo (up to 12 months for social sciences and the humanities, up to 6 months for other scientific disciplines). 

    Parallel publishing to UTUCRIS meets above mentioned requirements.

  3. by 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).

Peer-reviewed articles produced in projects funded by the Council may not be published using the so-called hybrid model, where individual articles published in subscription-based journals are made open access on payment.

The costs of ensuring open access to scientific publications published under the Research Council's funding terms and conditions are included in the overheads of sites of research.

Regardless of the chosen method of open access, the scientific publications of projects funded by the Research Council of Finland must be archived in a repository that guarantees long-term storage for and free open access to the publication.

Using CC Licenses for Open Access of Peer-Reviewed Articles

Peer-reviewed articles must be published with a license that ensures global, free, and immediate open access for readers. The license must also allow free redistribution and modification of the article's content. The Council primarily requires the use of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) 4.0 license, though CC BY-SA 4.0, CC0, or CC BY-ND licenses are also permitted. It is not necessary to ask permission from the Council to use these licenses. 

Open Access for Other Scientific Publications

The Council also encourages open access publishing for conference papers and monographs. The Research Council will prepare guidelines on the implementation and funding of open access to conference proceedings and monographs once the national policy on open access to scholarly publications has been updated with a policy on monographs.

For more information, please refer to the Research Council of Finland's website. 

Created 21.11.2024 | Updated 22.11.2024