Responsibly open Diak – learning, research, development and knowledge
Open science aims to make multilingual scientific knowledge openly available and reusable for all, to increase scientific collaboration and knowledge-sharing for the benefit of science and society, and to open the processes of creating, evaluating and disseminating scientific knowledge to societal actors outside the traditional research community.
Diak adheres to the Declaration for Open Science and Research 2025–2030 and its corresponding policies and recommendations. Diak supports and encourages its staff to make use of open practices in their everyday work and participates actively in the national Open Science and Research network.
The guiding principles for promoting openness—collaboration and participation, transparency and accountability, diversity and multilingualism, sustainability and the common good—strengthen Diak’s own values. Diak promotes openness systematically, responsibly and across all its activities. The four focus areas of the policy are: openness of operational culture, openness of research data and methods, openness in publishing, and openness of research data as well as learning.
Openness of operational culture
Diak promotes openness in research, development and innovation (RDI) activities, as well as in learning, by increasing opportunities for participation. Learners, developers, researchers and citizens are invited to take part, and their involvement enhances the impact and societal relevance of our work. Open development processes make RDI and teaching practices transparent, and participation from various actors increases equality, supports sustainable development and broadens perspectives.
Through an open operational culture, we ensure access to the knowledge, materials and environments created by the university, as well as providing opportunities for different actors to engage in the university community. The methods, structures, services and systems used in Diak’s RDI work are described openly and clearly. This strengthens research reproducibility, peer review and the production of high-quality, responsible knowledge.
Diak complies with the national Recommendation for Responsible Researcher Evaluation. As a member of CoARA (Coalition for Advancing Research Assessment), Diak is committed to promoting responsible, qualitative and diverse evaluation that recognises the varied roles and tasks of higher education institutions and experts. At Diak, this diversity is advanced by making its different forms visible in recruitment, career paths and RDI work. CoARA provides a framework that helps articulate and highlight the research-based work that is strong at Diak: work-life-oriented expertise, the promotion of partnerships and societal impact.
The development of Diak’s partnerships with companies and other organisations is guided by Diak’s partnership model, which describes and defines the different phases of collaboration. Regular reporting compiles information on Diak’s partnerships, strengthening and ensuring open and goal-oriented partnership work.
Openness of research data
Diak’s staff and students produce and use a wide range of research data in RDI activities. The management of research data and methods follows the principles of open science: data are findable, accessible, interoperable and reusable (the FAIR principles). Openness is guided by the principle “as open as possible, as closed as necessary”, which takes ethical, legal and data protection requirements into account at every stage of the research process.
Openness in publishing
Diak’s publishing activities strengthen the university’s societal impact by sharing knowledge, fostering discussion and highlighting key results and best practices from RDI activities. We encourage and support all staff members to produce publications and to publish them via open channels.
Diak’s publications include scientific articles, professional literature, texts aimed at the general public and learning materials. Diak’s own publishing channels are its publication series and the online magazine Dialogi. Almost all publications, including theses, are openly available in Theseus, the shared repository of universities of applied sciences.
Openness in learning
The dialogical pedagogy applied at Diak supports open learning and teaching practices. The pedagogy emphasises the principles of open learning, such as participation, interaction, co-creation, building shared understandings and meanings, and the ability to comprehend knowledge structures and generate new knowledge.
Diak shares learning materials and information on their content, produced through RDI activities, openly in national information systems such as AOE.fi, Opin.fi and Finna.fi. Authors of learning materials are provided with pedagogical support as well as technical and legal guidance (copyright, licences for sharing). Accessibility and usability are key considerations in the production of learning materials.
CoARA – responsible research assessment
As part of the CoARA alliance (Coalition for Advancing Research Assessment), Diak is committed to promoting responsible, qualitative and diverse research assessment. CoARA recognises the varied roles and tasks of higher education institutions and experts. Diak strengthens this diversity by making it visible in recruitment, career pathways and RDI activities. CoARA serves as a framework that helps articulate this work and highlight Diak’s societal impact.
The focus of assessment is shifting from individual quantitative indicators (such as publication counts) towards the quality, impact and context of activities. For Diak, CoARA is significant because it:
- supports the integration of RDI, teaching and expert work, and recognises the value of applied research, development work and collaboration with working life
- strengthens the role of societal impact and practical benefits in assessment
- enables diverse career paths and roles (teachers, RDI specialists, project managers, supervisors)
- promotes a developmental and fair assessment culture that supports competence development and strategic goals.
