Ministry of Education and Culture endorses national move towards open source research data
The Ministry of Education and Culture, the Research Council of Finland and CSC – IT Center for Science have jointly tested the open version of the OpenAlex database as an information source for analysing Finland’s scientific publication activity and that of other countries.
The results produced using the OpenAlex database have now been published in the Vipunen statistical service of the Finnish National Agency for Education. This enables direct comparison of results with those of the fee-based Web of Science database. When comparing results from different databases, it should be noted that varying data sources may present different perspectives on the activities of Finnish research organisations. These differences do not indicate inaccuracies, but rather reflect distinct methodological approaches.
The objective of this work is to enable, in the long term, analyses of research organisations based on open data sources and to support the transition towards open research data infrastructures.
Responsible research evaluation requires that source materials be transparent and independent. To ensure this, the critical infrastructures and tools used to manage and exploit research data must remain under the control of the scientific community.
To date, comparable analyses have largely relied on databases maintained by commercial operators and have been utilised by organisations such as the Research Council of Finland in providing evidence for national science policy. In terms of scientific publication data, research evaluation in Finland remains significantly dependent on international commercial data providers, meaning that parts of the data describing Finnish research are not openly accessible.
Cooperation between the Nordic countries is under way to develop an open research data infrastructure in the Nordic context. Opportunities for collaboration are explored at annual expert meetings focused on the management and use of research data. The third such meeting held in Espoo in April at the invitation of the CSC.
The meeting focused on architectures that support openness and on existing infrastructures that enable the use of bibliographic and research data at national and institutional levels.
Inquiries: Jukka Haapamäki, Senior Ministerial Adviser, tel. +358 295 330 088
What is OpenAlex?
OpenAlex is an open database of scholarly information containing approximately 450 million research outputs, including articles, books, and datasets. As of April 2026, the database included data on approximately 100 million researchers, 100,000 organisations, 200,000 journals, and more than 2 billion bibliographic references.
OpenAlex aggregates data from several open sources, such as Crossref, DataCite, PubMed, and ORCID, generating structured datasets that link publications, researchers, and organisations into interconnected networks, for example.
All data in OpenAlex is available under a CC0 licence, allowing free reuse and modification without restrictions. No registration is required to access or use the service. No registration is required to access or use the service.