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Open science and open education

SAMK has committed to the principles of open science and research and supports open education.

SAMK has committed to the principles of open science and research and supports open education. SAMK strategy defines open science, open publications, open datasets and learning materials as central factors in SAMK Research, Development and Innovation (RDI).

Our principle is that research services, research environments (infrastructure), research data, methods and results are available to everyone. We support open education, using and creating open educational resources.

SAMK has committed to apply the recommendations and guidelines of the Declaration of Open Science and Research, the national Guidelines and Recommendations for Open Educational Resources, good scientific practice and good research ethics. For every research project we draft a data management plan to make the research data available. The plan contains the protection of confidential information as well as data storage and erasure.

We do not want to compete with local and regional small and medium enterprises in RDI. Our innovation operations are open, we aim to offer RDI results for all stakeholders and partners as effectively and widely as possible, if there are no trade secrets or protected IPR rights. Research results are usually published via open channels without author fees. We follow national recommendations on open publishing and copyright.

Services for open RDI and education

There is a working group at SAMK on open RDI and education. The working group develops the services for open science activities and promotes an open operational culture in SAMK. Services are available both for staff and students. Responsible for the services are the following:

Library Services (publishing register, self-archiving, metadata) julkaisurekisteri@samk.fi
ICT and Digital Services (saving the data, data protection)
Communication Services (blogs, internal communication, research news)
RDI Support Services (data management)
Faculties (copyright, research ethics, open educational resources)
Open publishing (publication series)
Finance and Administration (archives, document management systems)

For more information on open science and responsible evaluation, SAMK staff can contact Cimmo Nurmi, Vice President for Research.

SAMK is a part in the project financed by the Ministry of Education and Culture: Developing open RDI, Learning and Innovation Ecosystem at Universities of Applied Sciences.

Data management in different phases of research and final thesis

Research data life cycle.

Good data management in SAMK

Data management is essential at all phases in RDI or research. It is defined in Ethical recommendations for thesis writing at universities of applied sciences and principles of good research practices and ethical principles of the RDI. When planning the data management, follow the data protection and data security rules.

Data management is applied during the whole cycle of data collection: creating, saving, description and organizing data. Examples of RDI data: digital data, such as measurement results, laboratory entries, source codes, software, statistics, pictures, recordings, interview transcriptions, surveys or observations collected on a field research. Data can be physical and biological. Good data management ensures the possibility to use the data later in a transparent way: as open as possible, as hidden as needed. Special caution is applied when handling sensitive data or personal data.

Everyone benefits from good data management. Open data increases visibility and impact of RDI, permits networking, accelerates the research process, enables repetition and diminishes overlaps. It is important to know what kind of data is collected in RDI projects and how to make it available.

Giving the open access to the data is a scientific merit added to the CV. Citing other open access sources is also appreciated. Open access data produced during writing a final thesis could be used later again at the institution of higher education or by subscribers. Read more: Finnish Social Science Data Archive: Why are research data managed and reused?

Planning RDI projects or final thesis

SAMK requires a data management plan to be drafted for every RDI project. After a project has received the decision on funding the participants must prepare a data management plan using the SAMK form on Reportronic or the DMPTuuli form if the investor does not ask for another type. Name the persons responsible for data management during the project. These people are also in charge of detailing and updating the plan at later stages. You can ask for help by email aineistonhallinta@samk.fi.

Students writing their final thesis must draft a data management plan as a part of the thesis plan. You can use either SAMK forms, DMPTuuli form for students or Finnish Social Science Data Archive format.

DMPTuuli is a data management tool available for everyone. DMP refers to Data Management Plan. Use their website when drafting your research plan, applying for funding or managing the data.

The data management plan should include:

general description
ethical principles in processing personal data and the ownership of the data
documentation and metadata
saving and backups
open access after the project
liabilities and resources

If your data is to be kept secret and not open, you should mention and justify it in the annex. However, it is recommended to save a description of the data, metadata, in a national or international search service.

SAMK follows the ethical principles in human sciences published by the Advisory Board of Research Ethics (TENK). Support and advice are available on ethical questions at tutkimusetiikka@samk.fi. Stakeholders of the project must be involved in considering the ethical recommendations and clarifying possible liabilities. An ethical preassessment is completed when needed.

If your study involves human subjects, you may need authorizations or statements from them in advance (preassessment). If the object of the study is an organization or its employees, you always need a permission from the organization. Same applies if the author of the project or thesis is currently working for the organization in question. No data is to be collected before the authorization has been granted. You can find information on authorization practices on organization’s websites. If this is not the case, ask the management of the organization.

Your project might contain both data under a copyright and free of copyright. It is recommended to agree on processing this type of data already when planning your thesis. You can find more information on copyright and transfer of ownership in Finnish Social Science Data Archive.

Research, project or cooperation agreement is drafted for RDI projects to clarify the ground rules, ownership of background material and results, access and publishing rights. The results of a publicly funded project are expected to be published by default after the project. More information in the Declaration for open science and research.

A thesis research agreement is drafted to frame the ground rules, ownership of the datasets created during the process, access rights and later use of data. More information on these agreements from SAMK Open RDI and Education network.

Data management during the RDI or thesis project

If a detailed data management plan is not drafted already during the planning phase, it is done in the next phase by answering the following questions:

Data: What is collected and how?
Rights: Ownership, management and copyright
Ethical principles
Data protection and data security: How to ensure data protection and security? What are the rights of different users to process and read the data?
File formats and software: Saving and backups
Data processing and metadata
Open data, publishing and archiving

Collecting the data

It is important to plan how the data is collected to grant the quality and success of your RDI or thesis project. Data is collected according to the law and respecting basic human values, values of animals and of environment. It is recommended to document your research during the project because it would be time consuming and even impossible afterwards.

When there is a human being as a data subject in your RDI project, you have to take into account the requirements on identification and anonymizing of personal data as well as special rules on processing sensitive personal data.

Informing the participants about how the personal data is processed is especially important. Primarily, data protection aims to protect the participants. Completing a research project according to the Data Protection Regulation and Decree you ensure participant’s rights and your own legal protection. There must always be a specifically stated purpose to process personal data. It might be necessary to carry out an impact assessment alongside a research project representing a possibly high risk for data subject’s rights.

Data subjects get the information about how the data concerning them is collected, processed, transferred, disclosed, stored or processed. In the Data Management Guidelines you can find instructions on processing the data: when, what and how to inform data subjects.

National tools to promote transparency and open data for data management:

You can use the existing open access data if your data is compatible, for instance:

If you use existing data sets, references according to the national reference instructions. See Tracing data : Data citation roadmap for Finland.

File formats and software

In which format should you save the material or data and where? How to name the different versions? When saving and processing the data a special attention is paid to the compatibility of software and storage medium so that the technical quality of the datasets is ensured during its whole life cycle also in terms of data protection and security.

The saving format is chosen so that the data can be used and transferred to a long-term storage. You will find more information on long-term storage services on websites such as digitalpreservation.fi. A copy of your file must be saved in a format which is in current use and supported by several programs.

Backup, data protection and data security

The following information will be summarized on the website after the preparatory phase: publicly accessible information, internal or restricted-use information, partially confidential and confidential information.

The Act on the Openness of Government Activities applies to SAMK. Section 24 states the grounds for declaring a document confidential. These grounds are, for instance, information on research, data subject, health, work contract, human resources, economy, security, entrance exams and data related to legal, judicial or criminal matters.

However, only the documents or sections of documents with especially justified purpose should be processed as confidential or classified. There is a danger to over classify documents which then would harm the processing and increases the costs. On the other hand, classifying too little could endanger the data protection of SAMK or of data subjects in its’ data systems. Adequate classifying helps in managing the data, is easier to find and share, protects the personal data of students and personnel and secures the legal conformity and confidentiality.

When signing contracts of cooperation with third parties you should clarify the methods to process confidential and classified documents.

Remote desk ePouta is intended for processing sensitive data to be protected. You can contact SAMK representant for more information (tutkimusetiikka@samk.fi).

Documentation and metadata (description of the dataset)

Data analysis and documentation of codes and methods support the repeatability of research. Data collection and data analysis practices depend on the research field and on the type of dataset.

Producing metadata is worth beginning early. A dataset without metadata, a description of your data, does not serve the reader. Metadata helps to find and store the dataset for a long period, makes it accessible and reusable. It is recommended to create an index with metadata for each dataset.

Results from data collection instruments such as questionnaires or e-forms are saved as text files. Metadata includes also for example code books and README files. More information on processing quantitative data files and qualitative data files on Finnish Social Science Data Archive Data Management Guidelines.

Metadata collected in RDI projects is saved primarily on SAMK Reportronic database. Save and describe at least the name, general description, dates of data collection, authors, personal details and access rights.

Data management before finalizing a project or thesis

Before finalizing a RDI project or thesis you must cross-check the ownership, management and copyright of the dataset and related documents as well as the conditions and recommendations on publishing and archiving the data required by the RDI investors.

At the final stage you must also assess which datasets are stored and set a time for storage. Unnecessary and sensitive data is destroyed according to data protection and data security rules. If research subjects have been told the data concerning them would be destroyed after the research process, the data cannot be reused without a new consent of the subjects.

When the data is no longer in active use, the metadata is checked and completed if needed in SAMK Reportronic. If you want to save a RDI or thesis dataset, you can save it also in the national Etsin, Research Dataset Finder service even if the original dataset itself was not publicly accessible.

If possible, datasets related to SAMK RDI projects are stored primarily in data archives for research datasets. If you want to save the data for later usage in SAMK data bank, you could save the metadata in Etsin service as well. High-quality research data in SAMK data bank can be linked to Research.fi service, which aims to support open science and research. In the Fairdata service there is the metadata (IDA, long-term storage) of research data, metadata created with Qvain tool and metadata copied from other sources.

Fairdata service package secures the repeatability and verifiability of the research and the long-term availability of data.

Fairdata services.

Storage of RDI or thesis data after the project

SAMK RDI data after a project:

We recommend national archives for long-term storage of RDI data.
We recommend Louhi server for data from SAMK own development and research activities. If there are personal data in your dataset, restricted access for only those who have the right to use the data. Louhi server gives the access rights for a group, not for an individual (defined in data management plan). More information from ICT and Digital Services.
Archiving after the project is decided with Finance and Administration.

SAMK thesis on Louhi:

Thesis instructor and a responsible for data archives agree on storage and further use of data if the author of the thesis or the owner of the data have agreed to this.
The dataset should not include personal data if the data is accessible for others than SAMK staff and students.
The thesis instructor will ask for disk space if needed.

Open RDI communication

Transparency in producing the data is increasing in the society. Open access data and results of RDI projects and thesis methods have an impact on the society. Citizens, companies and communities will use open access data more and more in the future.

SAMK informs regularly about its RDI and thesis projects and supports open RDI and communication via Research.fi.

Open publishing and open access

Openness is a part of research activities. Immediate accessibility of scientific facts raises the quality of research and the impact the science makes on a society. The guidelines for open access serve basic research objectives aiming for immediate access. These guidelines also define the open access of newspaper or conference articles and measures how to promote equal access to scientific facts.

Open access means that a publication can be read online, printed and copied for free at least for non-commercial use.

Open access publication refers to a scientific publication or an article available online free of charge via channels like open online papers and archives such as Theseus.fi.

Creative Commons, CC license, is an international standard license for users to share a part of their copyright and give a predefined right for the user. The national guidelines ensure a CC license by 2022 for every new research publication in respect of researcher’s rights.

SAMK offers support and advice for staff. See into.samk.fi > Palvelut > Julkaisutoiminta (in Finnish).

Self-archiving

You can find publications and thesis of Universities of Applied Sciences and SAMK self-archiving articles in Theseus.fi. Authors save the metadata of their publication in Justus and add a file which will be transferred to Theseus.fi for open use. The author is responsible for agreeing on rights, authorization to save the data and the version to be saved. The library checks and publishes the saved data. More information for SAMK staff at into.samk.fi > Palvelut > Julkaisutoiminta (in Finnish) and julkaisurekisteri@samk.fi.

If you are not sure of the self-archiving rights:

Check the publisher’s open access principles on Sherpa Romeo (international publishing houses).
You can check the practices also directly with the publisher.
Make sure what is the possible embargo period after your article has been published but cannot yet be downloaded from an open access archive.

Gold, green and hybrid open access and author fees

Gold open access refers to a publication of an article in an open access paper demanding author fees. Costs occur for a researcher or a research group.

Green open access refers to publishing an article in open archives of a University of Applied Sciences (such as Theseus.fi) or in open archives in your own scientific field for free. ResearchGate, Acadmia.edu and other social networking services for researchers are not open access channels as such.

Hybrid open access refers to publishing an article in a paid paper enabling a researcher to pay for open access for an individual article. The author fee must be paid. Hybrid open access papers publish articles both subject to a charge and free of charge, while an open access paper contains only articles available for free.

Many open access papers get their financing from authors (article/author processing charge, APC). Hybrid papers levy these charges as well. Fees vary from tens of euros to several thousands of euros paid by researchers or research groups. It is good to remember these fees already when applying for financing for your project. FinELib has negotiated discounts with some publishers.

When choosing a publication, it is good to keep in mind that a wide range of stakeholders benefit from open access, levy high author fee and publish almost anything without a proper peer review. These are called predatory journals. They usually try to attract clients with tempting offers.

ORCID identifier

ORCID is an international register of digital researcher identifiers. The site Researcheridentifier.fi manages these identifiers in Finland. Using the identifier researchers ensure that their publications are linked to the right person. SAMK recommends using ORCID.

DOI and URN

Permanent identifiers such as DOI and URN help to find your publication although the web address would have changed in time.

Embargo

Embargo refers to the period set by a publisher after an article has been published and before it can be made available as open access.

Sherpa Romeo

Sherpa Romeo is an online service listing conditions for open access set by different international publishers.

DOAJ

DOAJ, Directory of Open Access Journals is an independent, collective and free of charge database on scientific papers and journals available openly.

Plan S

Plan S aims to publish results of research projects financed by national or European funds in trustworthy open platforms or science papers. Its objective is to offer results obtained with public funding for everyone at reasonable costs without paywalls.

Open education

Open learning

Open learning aims to widen the access to education by lowering obstacles and increasing the accessibility, offer and a learner-centric design.

Open learning means digital technology, diversifies teaching, learning, creating, developing and sharing by combining formal and informal ways of learning.

What are open educational resources

Open educational resources (OER) are different kinds of digital or other materials free of charge for teaching, education or learning available on public domains or licensed under an open license enabling free access, usage, editing and sharing without any restrictions or with very few limitations.

Library of Open Educational Resources

SAMK recommends publishing open learning materials in the Library of Open Educational Resources. Anyone can use these services developed by the Ministry of Education and Culture together with National Agency for Education, coordinated by CSC Center for Science.

Creating open educational resources

You can publish your own material in the Library of Open Educational Resources or in another form agreed.

The publication is open for others with a Creative Commons license defining the conditions of use.

We recommend CC BY-SA 4.0 license for teaching resources.

Licenses for open educational resources

Creative Commons licenses define the rights to use your datasets: Can someone else create their own sets based on yours? Can they use parts of your material in theirs? Can others update or translate your sets into another language or in Braille? Can others use your sets in a commercial training?

The Library of Open Educational Resources recommends Creative Commons 4.0 or Creative Commons CC BY-SA. Both licenses guarantee that your name will appear as the author and that other users can openly use it as a part of their learning, teaching or training processes. These licenses also grant the possibility for other users to modify your sets so that it stays updated also after you may not be interested to update it anymore. Creative Commons CC BY-SA guarantees that all modifications and adaptations are shared under the same open license terms.

Creative Commons BY-ND is not recommended for open educational resources since it is not possible to update or reuse, translate nor convert it in Braille. This license could not be used in trainings and courses subject to charge. Use the Non-Commercial CC BY-NC 4.0 with discretion because it cannot be used in trainings subject to charge. More information: Creativecommons.org.

JHS Recommendation 189: Permission to use open data (available only in Finnish)

If there are more than one author, all co-authors must agree on license. Templates are available only in Finnish.

Please note that if you use someone else’s pictures or other material as part of your own, they should be covered by an open license or you must have the right to use them within the terms of an open license. More information on copyright and open licenses: Copyrights in Education.

Software copyrights and licenses are divided in two main categories: open and closed-source licenses. Open licenses offer additional rights for users. Closed-source licenses on the other hand limit these rights. GNU General Public License is one of the most common open licenses with Creative Commons. It gives the right to use, copy, modify and share datasets. GPL conditions state that all resources must be licensed under same terms so that they can be modified and shared openly.

Citizen science

Learn more

Act on the openness of government activities

Aila data service portal

Anonymisation and personal data

AVAA – Open data publishing platform

Copyrights in education

Creative Commons

Declaration for open science and research 2020-2025

Developing open RDI, learning and innovation ecosystem at universities of applied sciences

DMPTtuuli

DOAJ