This is a guest post by Antti Poikola of Open Science Finland

Open Science Finland Group kickstarted in Tuusula Feb 2012.

Open Science Finland working group was kickstarted at the OKF Finland Convention in Tuusula 8-9.2.2013. The intense Round Table session attracted 15 open science enthusiasts despite being the last session of the evening and competing against the parallel sauna session! The working group was subsequently officially established under Open Knowledge Finland association (ry.).

Finland has already seen activity in promoting open access. The Finnish open access group FinnOA, for instance, promotes openess across the whole spectrum of scientific knowledge production. Publicly funded “Tutkimuksen tietoaineistot” (Research Data Resources) project supports more open science policy and building of the necessary open research data infrastructure.

A wider cultural change in the academic community is needed, however, to establish open practices as part of standard research practices. While many researchers favour open practices in science, truly coordinated efforts are still lacking at the national level. We believe that the strengthening the social networks through the open science network will facilitate the movement. Therefore, instead of focusing our limited resources to direct lobbying, we focus on community-driven activities and community building: we have established a (rather vibrant!) Facebook group for discussions and Kippt -linklist for sharing Open Science related links, and the group has rapidly grown to connect nearly 100 people.

Some of our current key activities include preparation of Finnish teaching material on open research, research-oriented software libraries, and mapping of the scattered national activities around the topic. If you’re involved in research, working in Finland and/or just interested in the topic, don’t hesitate to join us!