History and programming side by side
My career path has followed two parallel tracks ever since I chose what to study. Programming and history have accompanied me side by side since my student days. I studied history at the University of Turku, but my interest in information technology continued throughout my studies.
As a student, I built websites and web applications for humanities projects, academic departments, organisations, learned societies and scholarly journals. My most significant and longest-running collaboration was with Agricola, the Finnish History Network. At the same time, I gained practical experience in programming and online publishing.
After graduating in general history, I began a research career, first at Aalto University and later as a doctoral researcher at the University of Turku. Programming continued alongside my research.
In spring 2015, I heard about the project that was about to begin at TSV. The project felt like a natural next step because it combined my knowledge of research and science with the experience I had gained in programming and online publishing over the years. The two-year project resulted in Journal.fi—and marked the beginning of my current career at TSV.
Developing open-access publishing services
My work with TSV’s open-access publishing services includes maintaining Journal.fi and Edition.fi. In addition to developing the platforms, I support users, organise training, prepare documentation and handle a variety of communications, administrative and collaborative tasks. In recent years, open science development projects have also become a significant part of my work.
The field of open-access publishing has changed enormously over the past ten years. Web technologies and software have also developed rapidly, requiring continuous learning. The latest major transformation concerns artificial intelligence and its effects on both scholarly publishing and software development. The direction of this change remains partly uncertain, but its effects can already be seen in our daily work.
Collaboration in Finland and internationally
Three important communities are central to my work. At TSV, I am part of the IT department and also work closely with the publishing services team. In my daily work, I am in constant contact with the editors, publishers and other users of the scholarly journals we host through support services, training and other communications. Without their active involvement, our services would have no purpose.
The third community is the Public Knowledge Project, which develops the publishing platforms used by Journal.fi and Edition.fi. The international developer community is one of the most rewarding aspects of my work. It allows me to exchange experiences and solve shared challenges with people around the world whose work is very similar to mine.
Making research more accessible
The significance of my work comes from helping to support Finnish scholarly publishing and increase the visibility of research. Although my own work is often technical, its effects can be seen in very practical ways: research findings, journals and books are more readily accessible to researchers, students and anyone else interested in knowledge.
It is rewarding to see how the services I have helped develop have grown into an important part of Finnish scholarly publishing. It has been particularly gratifying to see Finland’s work on open-access publishing gain international visibility and recognition.
At the Federation of Finnish Learned Societies, I have been given a great deal of responsibility as well as the freedom to develop our open-access publishing services. The opportunity to influence different solutions and see their effects in practice has made my work particularly meaningful.