New collaboration to encourage Finnish scholarly journals to apply to Sherpa Romeo

17.5.2022

Two train tracks merging into one. The track continues to the horizon.

Jisc and TSV are collaborating to encourage journals and publishers in Finland to register their open access policies in Sherpa Romeo. The collaboration runs until December 2022.

Sherpa Romeo is an online resource that gives a summary of publishers' open access policies on a journal-by-journal basis. This service for the scientific community is increasingly important as there is a growing need for information about options for open access publishing.

Open access archiving is also one way of meeting Plan S criteria for openness. Articles can be made Plan S compliant by making the final published version or author’s accepted manuscript freely available in a repository. Thus, it is highly recommended that all scientific publishers register their self-archiving policy in Sherpa Romeo.

The TSV Publication Forum (Julkaisufoorumi in Finnish) and TSV Publication Services have identified ~330 potential journals published in Finland, of which 78 are already in Sherpa Romeo. In addition, 53 Finnish publishers have already registered their open access policy in Sherpa Romeo. TSV proposed a collaboration with Jisc to help with getting the rest of the Finnish journals and publishers registered and to get those already included to check that their information is up to date.

Jisc, TSV Publication Forum and TSV Publication Services will work together to facilitate the process of the journals’ and publishers’ possible inclusion in Sherpa Romeo by communicating criteria, translating instructions, and organising workshops for training and preparing applications. A further goal is to encourage Finnish journals and publishers that are not yet allowing open access archiving to consider it.

Most peer-reviewed journals in Finland are not-for-profit and are published by learned societies. TSV’s strategy for 2019-2023 includes developing open publication by member organisations so the pilot project launched with Jisc is very much on the Federation’s agenda. TSV is also the national coordinator of Finland’s open science policy.