VTT’s administration

The special duty of VTT as an independent and impartial research centre is to promote the wide-ranging utilisation and commercialisation of research and technology in commerce and society. VTT is a non-profit company.

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.

In addition to the parent company, VTT Group consists of three fully-owned subsidiaries:

• VTT Holding Oy
• VTT International Ltd
• VTT Ventures Ltd

In 2023, the Group’s net turnover was EUR 188 million and its operating result was EUR -1.1 million. In 2023, the parent company had a total of 1,135 customers. Its domestic revenue accounted for 55% of its turnover and foreign revenue for 45%. At the end of 2023, VTT had 2,355 employees representing 59 different nationalities. 86% of them have completed a university degree. Finland’s national metrology institute and national standards laboratory MIKES is part of VTT. You can find more information about VTT in our annual reports.

Year of VTT’s establishment: 1942 
Owned by the Finnish state, steered by the Ministry of Economic Affairs and Employment
*VTT Group 2023.

See our annual reports for more information. 

You can read more about VTT’s principles of corporate governance here. You find our communications principles here.

• Description of VTT’s Operating System
• ISO9001:2015 certificate
• ISO14001:2015 certificate
• ISO 45001:2018 certificate

• VTT's Code of Conduct
• VTT's Quality Policy
• VTT General Terms of Contract
• VTT’s Supplier Code of Conduct

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

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.