The University of Helsinki's open access repository Helda provides free access to a wide range of publications and research data produced at the University. Helda's collections grow by more than 10 000 publications per year.
Helda aims to increase the visibility, use and impact of the University's publications and to provide a stable and long-term repository for them.
Peer-reviewed articles and other publications are automatically transferred to Helda from the university's TUHAT Research Data System. As a rule, dissertations and theses are published openly in Helda. Digital copies and theses are available for reading in the library.
The Helda Open Books collection contains high-quality monographs written and edited by University of Helsinki researchers, as well as classic works in the disciplines. Serial publications of the University's departments are stored in their own collections for each publication series.
The Helda repository
If you wish to publish open access learning materials, monographs or publication series in Helda, please contact the library at helda@helsinki.fi.
In Helda, you can find resources produced by University of Helsinki researchers, teachers and students. Most of these resources are texts, but Helda also contains resources produced using presentation software as well as audio, image and video files. A large proportion of the main collections in Helda grow continuously with the addition of recent publications. In 2021 approximately 11,000 publications were added to the repository. Based on the type of content, Helda can be divided into the following main collections:
Helda also contains collections and content maintained by partners outside the University of Helsinki. The partners include the Finnish Meteorological Institute, Hanken School of Economics, the Finnish Food Authority (formerly Finnish Food Safety Authority Evira), the Social Insurance Institution of Finland (Kela), the National Land Survey of Finland, Finnish Environment Institute (Syke) and the Finnish Labour Heritage Association (Library of the Labour Movement). Helsinki University Library provides external customers with publication archive services, but is not responsible for the content of the collections.
Helda resources can be found, for example, through the Helda interface, the Helsinki University Library’s Helka service or search engines. In addition, Helda resources have been harvested for inclusion in services that aggregate content from publication archives (e.g., OpenAIRE, CORE, BASE).
Research publications stored in the Tuhat system are transferred to Helda’s Articles collection. Most articles published in Helda are archived in the Tuhat system by Helsinki University Library staff (see the self-archiving service). If a research article has not yet been published in Helda, you can send it to the Library by email to openaccess@helsinki. You can also archive your own publications in Tuhat and Helda. Instructions for self-archiving are available in the Library’s open access guide.
Helsinki University Library archives the University’s digital doctoral theses in Helda. As rule, the thesis files to be published in Helda are received from Unigrafia. Please see the Library and E-thesis websites for instructions on publishing digital doctoral theses.
Descriptive information (metadata) about theses written for second-cycle degrees (master’s theses, advanced-studies theses in medicine and licentiate theses in veterinary medicine) and assessed and approved in the E-thesis system is automatically transferred to Helda. If a student permits the publication of their thesis in the E-thesis system, the thesis file is also transferred to Helda. Further information is available on the E-thesis website.
Monographs and serial publications by members of the University community are published in Helda. Helda Open Books (HOB) is a showcase collection of open books in Helda: the books receive a DOI, which increases their international visibility, and are published under a Creative Commons licence, which defines their terms of use in detail. The HOB guide describes more comprehensively the scope of the service and the resources published in the collection (see also the series of blog posts presenting the Helda and Helda Open Books publication types). If you wish to publish a monograph, serial publication or final research report in Helda, please contact heldaopenbooks@helsinki.fi.
Separate collections have been established in Helda for the University’s publication series. If you wish to issue a serial publication in a collection currently in Helda or believe a publication series needs a separate collection in Helda, please contact helda@helsinki.fi.
The recommended publishing platform for most learning materials is the Finnish Library of Open Educational Resources maintained by CSC – IT Center for Science. If you have a question about publishing learning material or textbooks in Helda, please contact helda@helsinki.fi.
At present, Helda has no active service for publishing research resources. If you have questions about archiving or publishing research datasets or making them available for open access, please contact the University’s data support service at datasupport@helsinki.fi. Questions about resources previously archived in Helda can be sent to helda@helsinki.fi.
The client organisations using Helda are responsible for archiving their own resources in the service. Questions about archiving rights should be sent to helda@helsinki.fi.