Skip to Main Content

How to search for information: Open Access

Open Access = OA

Freely available on the net, free of charge.

Open access publishing is increasing. Why?Open access logo.

  • Openness and transparency is a basic principle of science.
  • Research is financed with public funds. Therefore, it's reasonable to expect that research results are made public and available to all.

Why should you be interested in Open Access publications and data?

  • Open access publications are accessible throughout your career, even after graduation.
  • As a contrast, research publications in library's databases are behind a paywall. Their use is limited to Haaga-Helia's students and staff.

Open access publications

Open publications include

  • OA journals with all contents open (scientific and professional publications)
  • Individual open access articles in scientific journals otherwise subject to a fee
  • Articles, theses, and other publications in organizational or subject-specific repositories such as Theseus, Aaltodoc, Helda
  • Self-archived publications
    • Self-archiving = an article is originally published in a scientific journal subject to a fee and then saved in an open repository. The self-archived copy is freely available immediately or after a pre-determined time (embargo)
    • Publications of public research organizations and public authorities

Find open access publications

  • Google Scholar - Google's search engine specializing in research publications
  • BASE (Bielefeld Academic Search Engine) - search engine for open research data
  • CORE - searches articles in open repositories and open access journals
  • DOAB - Directory of Open Access Books
  • DOAJ - Directory of Open Access Journals
  • Iris.ai - Search tool utilizing artificial intelligence. Searches open access publications.
  • Journal.fi - Finnish research journals online
  • OSF Preprints - Open Science Network, searches several preprint archives at the same time
  • TiSci - scientific journals in Finland

More information on Alternative Access to articles (site by FinELib Consortium)

.

Open data

 

The openness of research is also promoted by making research data available for others to use.

Search for Finnish open data with the following services:

Research data must be cited, just like other sources (books, articles, etc.). The original producer of the data must be given credit.

How to use open access materials?

Creative Commons

When you use publications or data produced by someone else, you need to use appropriate citations and be aware of copyright and licensing issues. Materials and data on the internet may either be freely utilized or use may be restricted. The terms for use are usually determined by licenses. A licensing system often used is Creative Commons (CC).

Creative Commons license conditions are listed in the table below. An author of original material can decide how users may utilize his/her material and indicate these rights with a combination of the CC conditions.

For instance, a combination can look like this:

Creative Commons -lisenssi

This work is licensed under Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International license (CC BY-SA 4.0) .

BY, BYAttribution
Name of the original creator must be mentioned when using the work.
Creative commons logo attribution
NC, NonCommercial
Only non-commerial use is allowed.
Creative commons logo non-commercial.
SA, ShareAlike
Can be used if published under the same license as the original.
Creative commons logo share alike.
ND, NonDerivatives
The orignal work cannot be modified in any way.
Crative commons logo non-derivatives.

Public domain / CC0
Creator has given up all his/her rights or the copyrigt protection period has ended,.

Public domain logo.

More information is available on the Creative Commons website .

Using images

Images published on the internet are protected by copyright. ImagOA guide by Aalto University provides information on searching and using open access images.

ImagOA logo

 

Open Research, Development and Innovation at Haaga-Helia

Haaga-Helia is committed to promoting opennes in its activities. More information in the guide

Saavutettavuusseloste / Accessibility Statement