At SAMK, we are committed to following the principles of open science and research and to supporting openness in learning through our actions. We follow ethical principles and relevant national, EU and international legislation, as well as the principles of the Finnish National Research Integrity Committee (TENK) to ensure voluntary participation, information, confidentiality and data protection. SAMK conducts research in accordance with its CoARA plan. Open science, open publishing and open materials and teaching materials are at the heart of RDI activities and teaching.
Our principle is to make research services, research environments (infrastructures), research materials and methods, and research results available to all. We support openness in teaching by increasing the use of open learning materials and by producing open learning materials. Research projects are subject to a data management plan, which covers making research data open, protecting confidential data, and storing and disposing of data.
There is a separate internal document guiding the principles of business cooperation, which describes the exploitation of RDI results, the commercialisation of innovations and contractual procedures.
Our RDI activities do not compete with the services of SMEs in the region. We will engage in open innovation, with the aim of transferring the results of our RDI activities to stakeholders and partners in the most efficient way. The results of RDI activities, which are not subject to IPR or trade secrets, will be disseminated as widely as possible in line with the principles of open science and research. As a general rule and where possible, SAMK’s research results will be published in open, author-paid publication channels. National recommendations on open access and copyright are taken into account when publishing materials and results, as well as teaching and learning materials.
The task of SAMK’s open science working group is to activate and promote an open operational culture in SAMK. Services are available both for staff and students. Responsible for the services are the following:
For more information on open science and responsible evaluation, SAMK staff can contact Cimmo Nurmi, Vice President for Research and by email at aineistonhallinta@samk.fi.
SAMK is part of the Open RDI and Learning Network, which supports the transition towards a more open culture.
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.
SAMK implements policies on the transparency of research data and research methods: Policies of open science and research in Finland.
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?
Announcement of research form OP22B is used for small-scale researches at SAMK, which are implemented by the personnel to develop the operation or by the students as their exercises before the actual thesis. For partial researches connected to some research entity with previously granted research permit.
Attach to the application a short report of the research and send the announcement and research information
scanned as email attachments to tutkimusluvat@samk.fi. When collecting research material, remember to inform
that research permit has been granted for the research.
Form OP23B is used for researches concerning Satakunta University of Applied Sciences.
After completing the application until the signature phase, send the application as an email attachment to the
address tutkimusluvat@samk.fi and inclose your research plan approved by the supervisor. When
collecting research material, remember to inform that research permit has been granted for the research.
For information about research permit for thesis, please visit page Instructions for written assignments and theses.
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 if the investor does not ask for another type. The data management plan includes a description of the data, how it is collected, its location, licence, access rights, confidentiality, storage, destruction and who owns the data and who is responsible for it.
Students writing their final thesis must draft a data management plan as a part of the thesis plan. You can use either SAMK forms or Finnish Social Science Data Archive format.
For support in the starting phase of a new RDI project, please email aineistonhallinta@samk.fi.
Data management can be guided by the practices of RDI projects.
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. For research on SAMK’s higher education community, see the previous section on research authorisations.
RDI project might contain both data under a copyright and free of copyright the use of which must be agreed 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.
For further information on RDI projects and thesis contracts, please contact Cimmo Nurmi, Vice President for Research.
The data management plan is made using SAMK’s form base in Reportronic. The Resource Management Plan contains the following information:
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.
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.
The following information will be summarised 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.
For further information on the processing of sensitive and proprietary data, please contact tutkimusetiikka@samk.fi.
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.
The metadata of data collected in RDI projects is primarily stored in SAMK’s Reportronic data management plan.
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. 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.
SAMK RDI data after a project:
SAMK thesis in the data repository:
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. Citisens, 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.
Read more: Policy for Open Access to Scholarly Publications.
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.
SAMK offers advice for staff. See Into intranet → In English → Services → Publishing.
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 in Into intranet → In English → Services → Publishing and julkaisurekisteri@samk.fi.
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 is an international register of digital researcher identifiers. The site Researcheridentifier manages these identifiers in Finland. Using the identifier researchers ensure that their publications are linked to the right person. SAMK recommends using ORCID.
Permanent identifiers such as DOI and URN help to find your publication although the web address would have changed in time.
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 is an online service listing conditions for open access set by different international publishers.
DOAJ, Directory of Open Access Journals is an independent, collective and free of charge database on scientific papers and journals available openly.
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.
SAMK is committed to the policy of openness in learning and learning materials. The policy takes into account the Library of Open Educational Resources and the joint vision of Arene and Unifi for the digitalisation of higher education. We follow Arene’s recommendation for opening learning materials (2023). The recommendation can be found on the Into intranet.
SAMK started a project in early 2024 to increase the openness of learning materials by sharing them both internally and openly.
Educational material can be a stand-alone entity that can be used as such, such as a book or a recorded lecture. It can also be a teaching aid that requires other materials to be used alongside it to be understood. The learning material to be opened must be of high quality. Quality criteria for open learning materials can be found in the Recommendations on Openness in Learning.
Open educational materials should be published on publishing platforms such as the Library of Open Educational Resources. The service and the educational materials available there can be used by anyone. The service is being developed by the Ministry of Education and Culture and the Finnish National Agency for Education and coordinated by the CSC.
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?
The Library of Open Educational Resources recommends Creative Commons CC BY-SA, which allows you to use the work for commercial purposes and to modify it. The author’s name must always be credited, and the modified or commercialised work must be re-licensed under the same CC BY-SA license.
Creative Commons BY-ND is not recommended for open educational resources since it is not possible to update or reuse. 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. Read more about CC licenses on the Creative Commons website.
Computer software copyrights and licenses fall into two main categories: open and closed licenses. Open licenses give the user additional rights. Closed licenses restrict the user’s rights.
The GNU General Public License is one of the most widely used open licenses, along with Creative Commons, which gives the right to use, copy, modify and redistribute a work. A condition of the GPL is that any variations of the work are licensed under the same license, so they too can be freely modified and redistributed.
Citizen science is scientific research carried out by ordinary people. They can help to carry out research, such as collecting, classifying or analysing research data. People are not the subjects of research, but the doers of it. You do not need to be a trained scientist to take part in research.