Open access to peer-reviewed scientific articles
The Research Council of Finland requires that projects funded by us commit to ensuring immediate open access to their peer-reviewed articles in accordance with Plan S principles and Finland’s national policy for open access to scholarly publications. This requirement applies to projects funded from Research Council calls opened after 1 January 2021. The requirements that apply to projects funded earlier are available in the funding terms and conditions that were in use at the time the funding decision was made.
The Research Council requires open access according to Plan S definitions.
The Research Council requires that researchers and research projects funded by us make research outputs wholly or partially produced with Research Council funding available to the public immediately after publication. As regards peer-reviewed articles, this can be done in three ways:
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:n but other published material is not fully open access.
2) By making the scientific publication openly available in a repository (either as a Version of Record or as an Author Accepted Manuscript) that supports immediate access and is in compliance 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 Research 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).
The Research Council considers that all repositories operating in Finland with the support of Finnish universities and government research institutes fulfil these conditions. Researchers funded by us may also use international, reliable repositories for self-archiving purposes.
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). The agreements must be valid during the period 1 January 2021–31 December 2024.
Peer-reviewed articles produced in projects funded by us may not be published using the so-called hybrid model, where individual articles published in subscription-based journals are made open access on payment.
