VTT’s administration

VTT Technical Research Centre of Finland Ltd is a Finnish, fully state-owned limited liability company operating under the ownership steering of the Ministry of Economic Affairs and Employment. The obligations and responsibilities of the company’s management are defined by Finnish law. VTT’s parent company and its subsidiaries together form VTT Group.

VTT’s management system is based on the provisions of the Limited Liability Companies Act and the Corporate Governance Code. The general meeting is the highest executive body of the company. The voting right of VTT’s owner, the Finnish state, is exercised by the Ministry of Economic Affairs and Employment in the annual general meeting.

Corporate governance

VTT is a limited liability company that is fully owned by the Finnish state and operates under the ownership steering of the Ministry of Economic Affairs and Employment. More information about VTT as a company.

The annual general meeting is the highest decision making body of VTT Technical Research Centre of Finland Ltd., and it elects the VTT Board and auditor.

VTT Group is directed by the parent company’s board and CEO, who is appointed by the Board. The tasks of VTT Board include overseeing the implementation of the company’s strategy and being responsible for the profitability of operations.

The Executive leadership team supports the CEO in decision-making. 

Values and operating principles

VTT’s decision making and operations are directed by the company’s values and operating principles. Our values are:

  • Respect
  • Together
  • Passion
  • Forerunner

Our ethical norms are: 

  • Impartiality
  • Reliability
  • Integrity
  • Responsibility

We are committed to the principle of open publishing: scientific publications produced at VTT are principally open-access.

Open science principles

VTT promotes good research practices related to open science. Researchers publish results and interpretations of research in an open and transparent manner, and respect confidentiality of data or findings when legitimately required to do so.

All the scientific articles and conference papers produced at VTT should be published according to open access principles. The copyright rules and agreements with publishers and collaboration parties may cause exception to this basic rule.

Open access principles

In general, all the scientific articles and conference papers produced at VTT should be published according to open access principles. The copyright rules and agreements with publishers and collaboration parties may cause exception to this basic rule. Publications in VTT’s own publication series are publicly available. Information about these publications and articles are stored into VTT’s current research information system. There are also links to the documents when possible. The research information system is accessible at cris.vtt.fi.

The articles may be opened through external service (Gold or hybrid Open Access) or by self-archiving to a current research information system (Green Open Access). The publishing channel should always be the most relevant, taking quality, impact and openness into account. The model is adopted on the basis of the project’s, partner’s and funder’s needs, agreements and requirements.

Whenever possible VTT will retain copyright to articles and publications to enhance their reuse. Creative commons license CC BY 4.0 is recommended.

Open data

In this context, data means digital data and background material created within a research project. Data management and the data openness should when appropriate, be in line with the FAIR Principles:

  • Findable
  • Accessible
  • Interoperable
  • Reusable

VTT promotes and has a goal to open also the data related to and the data behind the scientific articles created in publicly funded projects. VTT’s target is to ensure that access to data is as open as possible and as closed as necessary.

The basic principles are the good ethical scientific principles. The balance between openness and confidentiality is determined in each research project individually. There are many aspects related to regulations, GDPR, agreements within parties, VTT’s IPR guidelines and commercial perspectives, which all have to be taken into account.

The metadata of the datasets will be stored into the VTT’s current research information system, whenever possible, which makes the findability and accessibility of the datasets easier.

The Research Data Management Plan (RDMP) includes the most relevant information of the data management: Data collection, data handling and ownership, publishing and user rights. Also the life cycle, management of confidential information, and rules of data disposal are presented in RDMP.