Photo: Unsplash and TSV.

The board of the Federation of Finnish Learned Societies (TSV) decided at its meeting on May 14, 2024, that TSV will sign the Barcelona declaration of open research information. Signing the Barcelona Declaration strengthens TSV's activities promoting open research information.

“TSV works actively for, among other things, the linguistic and regional diversity of research. For advancing responsible assessment and open science it is important to make research information available through open infrastructures”, says the Secretary General of Publication Forum at the TSV Janne Pölönen.

A large part of all research information is locked in commercial infrastructures, which do not allow a transparent review of the quality and coverage of the material. Sources of commercial research information (for example, Web of Science or Scopus databases) define quality criteria, but often do not consider, for example, the linguistic and regional diversity of research work.

The signatories of the Barcelona Declaration commit to the following measures in promoting the openness of research data and changing practices:

1. We will make openness the default for the research information we use and produce

2. We will work with services and systems that support and enable open research information

3. We will support the sustainability of infrastructures for open research information

4. We will support collective action to accelerate the transition to openness of research information

In its own operations, TSV promotes particularly the production of open metadata for scientific publications and the use of permanent identifiers (especially DOI, ORCID, ROR) on the Journal.fi and Edition.fi platforms. In addition, TSV promotes good community governance practices and sustainable development on its publishing platforms.

TSV has facilitated a discussion in the Finnish scientific community about open research information and the Barcelona declaration.

The Barcelona Declaration on Open Research Information was prepared by a group of over 25 research information experts, representing organizations that carry out, fund, and evaluate research, as well as organizations that provide research information infrastructures. The group met in Barcelona in November 2023.

For more information:

Barcelona declaration’s homepage

TSV’s news article about the Barcelona Declaration (8.4.2024)