Open Access Self-Archiving Mandate at the University of Helsinki, Finland

Open access to output of publicly funded research enhances the visibility and the impact of the work of the University as well as of individual researchers.
The goals of the University of Helsinki are
• To support open access to research results
• To make results of publicly funded research openly accessible online to anyone interested
• To encourage other funding bodies as well to require research results funded by them be made public
• To increase the visibility, use and impact of research publications of the University of Helsinki by providing open access through the University’s own repository
• To make its repository and publication records openly available online and available for linkage to other repositories internationally
• To ease the reviewing of research results with open access research publications

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. The University of Helsinki recommends the depositing of articles in the repository of the University also for articles published before this date.

The researcher is responsible for submitting a full-text version of his/her article to the open repository which is maintained by the University library. The University will offer the support services needed in the deposit process for all its researchers.
In addition to the research articles, other kinds of publications such as popular articles, other published texts, serial publications of University departments, teaching material and, publishing contracts permitting, monographs may be stored in the open repository of the University of Helsinki.

University of Helsinki is the first university in Finland to mandate open access self-archiving of its scholarly output. With its more than 38 000 students and nearly 8000 employees University of Helsinki is the biggest multidisciplinary institution of higher education and research in the country. University of Helsinki web pages http://www.helsinki.fi/university/