Contracts related to the project and any amendments to them must be handled together with the Uniarts Helsinki legal services. Researchers may not sign any contracts that conflict with the funder’s instructions (for example, it must be checked if the funder requires open access publishing).
On this page, you can find information on the following types of contracts:
• funding agreement
• consortium agreement
• cooperation agreement
• agreement on rights in projects receiving external funding
• research data ownership agreement
• authorship agreements between researchers
• economic and moral copyright in accordance with the Copyright Act
• consents, photography, recording and filming permissions/agreements and related publishing agreements
• agreements on the processing of personal data
Please note that sometimes carrying out research may also require the signing of other agreements than the ones listed. The need for these agreements must be discussed with the parties concerned and the unit in question at the university, and, if necessary, the legal services help in the agreement arrangements.
Persons who have signed a visitor agreement cannot simultaneously have an employment relationship with Uniarts Helsinki or work in projects that receive external funding.
The funding agreement is signed by Uniarts Helsinki. The party with the right of approval depends on the total project budget. The total budget is made up of the funding provided by the funder and any possible funding received from the university.
The value of an application is either the portion of the project that is Uniarts Helsinki’s responsibility or the whole project, if it is solely carried out by the university or if the university is responsible for it also on behalf of other participants.
Over €2,000,000
• Decision-maker: the university board
Less than €2,000,000
• Decision-maker: the rector
Less than €1,000,000
• Decision-maker: the vice rector. In accordance with the topic of the project. If the project is not related to research or education, the rector is the decision-maker.
Less than €100,000
• Decision-maker: the dean, other members of the rector’s executive group
Less than €50,000
• Decision-maker: on the basis of delegation, the director or head of the faculty, department, unit
Uniarts Helsinki serves as the site of research, but the unit responsible for the project’s practical arrangements may be Uniarts Helsinki, the Research Institute, Open Campus or Uniarts Helsinki’s academy/academies. The parties signing the funding agreement check that its terms match the ones presented in the application and that the commitments to be made are proportional to the amount of funding granted.
In agreement preparation, please note also implied financial responsibilities, such as possible expert expenses, applicable law and court. In international contexts, always be in touch with the university’s research services as well as the HR and legal services, if necessary, in good time.
When making preparations for agreements, the instructions on Artsi are utilised (including checking any necessary background information and sanctions and the two-signature rule): Preparation of decisions, contracts and statements
The rules and responsibilities between partners in a consortium project should be agreed upon already in the application phase. When signing a contract with an external party, Uniarts Helsinki always acts as the contracting party in place of the individual researcher, although the researcher often represents the university in the contract negotiations. That is why it is advisable to get in contact with the university’s legal counsel in contract matters from the very start.
The consortium or partnership agreement should only be entered into after the funding has been secured. Projects funded by the EU Horizon 2020 programme use the DESCA 2020 Model Consortium Agreement.
If the project involves cooperation with other universities, companies or other organisations or parties, a cooperation agreement needs to be signed. The agreement states the roles, rights and obligations that the parties have agreed on for themselves.
The Research Council of Finland requires that a written agreement is made before the launch of the project concerning the division of costs, risks and results of the project, the distribution of the results and the use and distribution of intellectual property rights. The results of research projects funded by the Research Council of Finland must be made public. The openness of the results may not be limited with any contracts signed with cooperation partners or any other contracting parties. Other funders usually have their own similar conditions.
Research projects may sometimes also involve procurements, which are handled in accordance with Uniarts Helsinki’s general procurement and tendering guidelines: Procurements and competitive tendering. In all procurements, the university is obligated to follow sanctions legislation and to carry out checks on the parties’ backgrounds.
Uniarts Helsinki has various obligations arising from legislation, the terms of external funding and responsibilities towards contractual partners. The university may only fulfil its obligations towards the use of research results by signing a contract on the reuse of data with the parties of the project.
In projects where Uniarts Helsinki receives external funding (e.g. from the Research Council of Finland, the EU, a company), an agreement must be signed stating that the employees and students working on the project agree to transfer rights related to the project’s results to Uniarts Helsinki in the manner specified by the project’s terms and conditions.
If you participate in projects that are undertaken with external funding while working at Uniarts Helsinki, you must sign an agreement where you commit to transferring rights to the outcomes of the projects undertaken with external funding in accordance with the terms and conditions governing the external funding. The scope of the transfer of rights is determined by the terms and conditions governing each instance of external funding. Copyright and confidentiality terms and conditions are gathered in an appendix of your agreement for each project with external funding. The appendix is updated accordingly if you are granted new external funding.
As a part of making a data management plan, the members of the research group should agree on the duties, responsibilities and rights of the research participants regarding the research data. Recommended things to go over include, for example, the ownership of the research data and who has the right to determine the terms of reuse and decide on the sharing and destroying of the data.
The research data’s financial copyright or the right to use the data, including rights of adaptation and transfer, are transferred to Uniarts Helsinki with an agreement on the assignment of rights.
Copyright is granted directly by law and does not require separate registration. It covers the results of the project, such as written materials, photographs, original drawings and other works.
The use of copyrighted works in a research project may only be agreed on with a formal contract, and the rights must be transferred with an agreement on the assignment of rights.
At the beginning of a research project, the members of the research group must agree on the practical arrangements for fulfilling moral copyright, i.e. an author’s right to be acknowledged as the author.
Different fields of research have different practices regarding who is named as an author or other contributor of an academic publication. With research data, articles or other publications, it is necessary to agree on the naming of the authors, i.e. what level of contribution is required for the author status.
It is advisable to draw up a written agreement on the principles of work distribution and authorship before commencing the project. Topics to consider include what kind of contributions are required for author status; who are the authors and how their naming order is determined; and on what basis are people credited in the publication.
You can read a recommendation by the The Finnish National Board on Research Integrity TENK on how to agree on authorship in academic publications on the Board’s website. There are template forms for agreeing on authorship-related definition of roles and authorship as appendices to the recommendation.
In academic publishing, an author is a person who has contributed to the writing of a scientific article or other publication in such a major way that they need to be mentioned in the publication’s list of authors or contributors. Different fields have differing practices on who is mentioned in the list of authors of a co-authored publication.
According to the guidelines of the Finnish Advisory Board on Research Integrity (TENK), the researchers taking part in research projects and other authors of collective publications should discuss authorship already when planning research and also make a written agreement on the matter. The authorship of doctoral thesis projects should also be agreed on early on.
The ethical review committee of Uniarts Helsinki also recommends discussions on the matter beforehand and, if necessary, making agreements on the authorship of artistic productions, as well. According to the Copyright Act, copyright comes automatically into existence when a work is produced.
Research Services
researchservices@uniarts.fi
Contractual matters for researchers
Titti Luukkainen
Copyright matters
Matters related to copyright transfer and copyright agreements
Maria Rehbinder, maria.rehbinder@aalto.fi
