Open science and research leads to surprising discoveries and creative insights: Open science and research roadmap 2014–2017

This roadmap is based on the work of the Open Science and Research Initiative (ATT), a cross-administrative initiative established by the Ministry of Education and Culture, whose goal is to promote open science and the availability of information. Open science means the promotion of an open operating model in scientific research. The key objective is, subject to the restrictions of research ethics and the juridical environment, to publish research results, research data and the methods used, so that they can be examined and used by any interested party. Open science includes practices such as promoting open access publishing, openly publishing research materials, harnessing open-source software and open standards, and the public documentation of the research process through ’memoing’. Open science and research can significantly increase the quality and competitiveness of Finland’s research and innovation system. By increasing openness in research, we will simultaneously be improving reliability, transparency, and the impact of research. Openness also creates opportunities to participate in scientific advancement, and enables easier and more effective utilisation of research results. Promoting open science and research requires not only extensive involvement from the research community, but also cooperation and coordination, internalising new ways of working, and developments in research environments, researcher services and research infrastructures. Our vision for 2017 is: Open research leads to surprising discoveries and creative insights. This means a situation in which research data and materials move freely throughout society; from one researcher or research team to another, between disciplines, to innovative businesses, and to decision-makers and citizens. Information flow is facilitated by clear policies and best practices, and by providing services to safeguard the availability of scientific and research results. Openness is a joint operating model. Openness has given Finnish research an international competitive edge. Research results (publications, data, methods and the tools required to publish) will be openly and permanently available in data networks via standardised interfaces in accordance with ethical principles and respecting legal operating environments. Openness within research infrastructures will always be pursued when it is legally and contractually possible. Further use of research results is not unnecessarily restricted, and the terms and conditions of their use are clearly defined. The objectives of the Open Science and Research Initiative (ATT) are to make Finland the leading country for openness in science and research by 2017, and for the opportunities afforded by open science to be extensively harnessed in Finnish society. Open science and research leads to surprising discoveries and creative insights Open science and research roadmap 2014–2017. Dialogue in science and research will be promoted on many levels, both nationally and internationally. The roadmap will be implemented via four sub-objectives, which are: - reinforcing the intrinsic nature of science and research, so that openness and repeatability increase the reliability and quality of science and research. - strengthening openness-related expertise, so that those working in the Finnish research system know how to harness the opportunities afforded by openness to boost Finland’s competitive edge. - ensuring a stable foundation for the research process, so that good, clear basic structures and services enable new opportunities to be harnessed at the right time and ensure a stable basis for research. - increasing the societal impact of research, so that open science creates new opportunities for researchers, decision-makers, business, public bodies and citizens. A set of measures has been defined to achieve these sub-objectives. To realise our vision, all parties must engage in extensive cooperation to implement these measures. Using the measures in this roadmap, various parties will take responsibility for putting policies into practice. We will gauge our success in achieving targets by monitoring the progress and impact of individual measures. Monitoring will also be promoted by increasing visibility, by analysing shared sets of basic information, with impact assessments, and through the required support functions and analyses

Qualitative and Qualitative Longitudinal Resources in Europe

In April 2009 the UK Timescapes Initiative, in collaboration with the University of Bremen, organised a residential workshop to explore the nature of qualitative (Q) and qualitative longitudinal (QL) research and resources across Europe. The workshop was hosted by the Archive for Life Course Research (Archiv für Lebenslaufforschung, ALLF) at Bremen and funded by Timescapes with support from CESSDA (The Council of European Social Science Data Archives, Preparatory Phase Project). It was attended by archivists and researchers from 14 countries, including ‘transitional’ states such as Belarus and Lithuania. The broad aim of the workshop was to map existing infrastructures for qualitative and QL data archiving among the participating countries, including the extent of archiving and the ethos of data sharing and re-use in different national contexts. The group also explored strategies to develop infrastructure and to support qualitative and QL research and resources, including collaborative research across Europe and beyond

In Between Research Cultures – The State of Digital Humanities in Finland

Digital humanities (DH) as a research field has been developing rapidly in Finland during the past few years,mainly due to increased funding and profiling activities. Although these infrastructural developments havecreated (smaller and larger) centres, hubs and clusters related directly or indirectly to digital humanities, thefuture of Finnish research in this area depends on how the various scholarly and memory organisations, aswell as individual scholars, succeed in joining forces. The overall argument in this paper is that digital huma-nities needs to establish its identity and to create a new space among research cultures with varying charac-teristics tackling a multitude of problems, and that this can only be achieved through national collaborationand the joint exploitation of the strengths of existing DH hubs. The article sets out a roadmap to this end,providing a detailed discussion of various developments in digital humanities, and analysing different possi-bilities in the international context. It is based on a survey conducted in 2016 among Finnish scholars in thefields of humanities and the social sciences, an analysis of existing infrastructures, and interviews with DHscholars involved with international top-level DH centres. The focus in the latter part of the article is on the-se interviews, and on the lessons learned abroad from which the Finnish DH community could benefit. Weconclude with a strong call for collaboration to facilitate the further development of the DH field in Finlandin response to international competition.Asiasanat: digital humanities; research infrastructures; digital research practices; Finland; data; collaboration;open science</div

Beyond East-West : marginality and national dignity in Finnish identity construction

Since the end of the Cold War it has become common for Finnish academics and politicians alike to frame debates about Finnish national identity in terms of locating Finland somewhere along a continuum between East and West (e.g., Harle and Moisio 2000). Indeed, for politicians properly locating oneself (and therefore Finland) along this continuum has often been seen as central to the winning and losing of elections. For example, the 1994 referendum on EU membership was largely interpreted precisely as an opportunity to relocate Finland further to the West (Jakobson 1998, 111; Arter 1995). Indeed, the tendency to depict Finnish history in terms of a series of ‘westernising’ moves has been notable, but has also betrayed some of the politicised elements of this view (Browning 2002). However, this framing of Finnish national identity discourse is not only sometimes politicised, but arguably is also too simplified and results in blindness towards other identity narratives that have also been important through Finnish history, and that are also evident (but rarely recognised) today as well. In this article we aim to highlight one of these that we argue has played a key role in locating Finland in the world and in formulating notions of what Finland is about, what historical role and mission it has been understood as destined to play, and what futures for the nation have been conceptualised as possible and as providing a source of subjectivity and national dignity. The focus of this article is therefore on the relationship between Finnish nationalism and ideas of ‘marginality’ through Finnish history

RIO Country Report 2017: Finland

The R&I Observatory country report 2017 provides a brief analysis of the R&I system covering the economic context, main actors, funding trends & human resources, policies to address R&I challenges, and R&I in national and regional smart specialisation strategies. Data is from Eurostat, unless otherwise referenced and is correct as at January 2018. Data used from other international sources is also correct to that date. The report provides a state-of-play and analysis of the national level R&I system and its challenges, to support the European Semester.JRC.B.7-Knowledge for Finance, Innovation and Growt

Deep coverage whole genome sequences and plasma lipoprotein(a) in individuals of European and African ancestries.

Lipoprotein(a), Lp(a), is a modified low-density lipoprotein particle that contains apolipoprotein(a), encoded by LPA, and is a highly heritable, causal risk factor for cardiovascular diseases that varies in concentrations across ancestries. Here, we use deep-coverage whole genome sequencing in 8392 individuals of European and African ancestry to discover and interpret both single-nucleotide variants and copy number (CN) variation associated with Lp(a). We observe that genetic determinants between Europeans and Africans have several unique determinants. The common variant rs12740374 associated with Lp(a) cholesterol is an eQTL for SORT1 and independent of LDL cholesterol. Observed associations of aggregates of rare non-coding variants are largely explained by LPA structural variation, namely the LPA kringle IV 2 (KIV2)-CN. Finally, we find that LPA risk genotypes confer greater relative risk for incident atherosclerotic cardiovascular diseases compared to directly measured Lp(a), and are significantly associated with measures of subclinical atherosclerosis in African Americans

SURVIVE TO THRIVE : How Finnish universities make use of futures knowledge in the 2021-2030 strategy

Futures knowledge refers to the understandings of a coming event generated by the change observation and interpretation of multidisciplinary viewpoints. It is a learning capability and cognition of change that influence future actions. In the era of VUCA (volatility, uncertainty, complexity, and ambiguity), the futures knowledge can benefit organizations to prepare and strategize their behaviors to cope with uncertain future. As the higher education institutions are knowledge producers, communicators, and multipliers, the study of futures knowledge at the university level become an interesting subject. This research selects four Finnish universities as case studies to investigate three important questions: 1) to what extent futures knowledge is used in the development of 2021 to 2030 strategies at the university level, 2) how futures knowledge of Finnish universities can impact Finnish higher education at the end of 2020s, and 3) how the university futures knowledge is related to the higher education strategy of Finnish government in 2021 to 2030. The research finding shows that the futures knowledge of the Finnish universities refers to the speculation and interpretation of general and educational trends. The institutions gather futures knowledge from different sources including the university proximate and extended communities, academic and non-academic research, and the government recommendation papers. While the university communities are the most exhaustive source of futures knowledge, the government roadmap is the most influential source that determines the future action-taking of the Finnish universities. This means the change and impacts that the Finnish academic institutions will bring by 2030 correspond with the Finnish government that aim to internationalize higher education, in-crease the impacts of research, create larger networks and partnership in business sec-tors, and promote digitalization and well-being of the academic community. To survive, the Finnish universities utilizes the government roadmaps as a frame to shape their futures knowledge and develop a strategy to answer the expectation of the government to access to their financial support. To thrive, the Finnish universities may need to push forward their agenda that reflect the needs and desire of their community, the greatest contributor of the futures knowledge at the university level. This can result in the community empowerment and the better quality of futures knowledge for strategic thinking