The committee was appointed to put forward recommendations for the promotion of open access to scientific and scholarly publications in Finland. The recommendations were to be addressed to research funding agencies, organisations conducting research and scientific publishers.

Open access means that the publication can be read by anyone free of charge and without restrictions on the internet. The aspiration to increase open access has recently aroused wide international interest. There are two primary means of providing open access: open access journals and open access online archives.

The committee's recommendations concern publications of all researchers residing in Finland, comprising those studies that will be published in Finland or abroad for which the authors do not expect payment. The recommendations do not apply to textbooks used in undergraduate education or popularised scientific works.

The aim of the recommendations is not to change the traditional standards used for evaluating the quality of scholarly publications, but to improve access to and the availability, distribution, visibility, usability and usefulness of the publications.

Most scientific research will be published in traditional subscription journals and fee-charging conference proceedings in the coming years. In order to improve their circulation and availability, the committee recommends that:

- Higher education institutions and research institutes, individually or jointly, set up the necessary open access online archives in which researchers can deposit copies of their publications for free access on the internet;

- Researchers are encouraged to deposit copies of their publications in these open access electronic publication archives with a view to rapid accumulation of material in them.

Further, the committee recommends that:

Funding agencies (e.g. the Academy of Finland and Tekes)

- accept author charges as research project expenditure when researchers publish their studies in open access journals which charge author charges on accepted articles; - in financing scientific publishers and publications, encourage them to provide open access;

Higher education institutions and research institutes

- make scientific studies published in their serials available through open access online archives; - recommend their researchers to publish their research in open access journals when there are open access journals in their field which are comparable to traditional subscription journals;

Journals and learned societies

- offer the scientific articles published in their serials to open access distribution as early on as possible; - allow the authors of articles published in their journals to deposit copies of their articles in open access online archives;

Libraries

- under the leadership of the National Library, support the internet distribution of the metadata and full texts of the materials deposited in open access online archives and the long-term preservation of these materials; - in cooperation, support the creation of Finnish open access online archives and their compliance with international metadata standards

The Ministry of Education

- promotes open access, sees to the implementation of these recommendations in cooperation with other Ministries and monitors the implementation - encourages higher education institutions to cooperate in promoting open access