Free-of-charge use in CSC’s services for research

This policy defines in which cases and with which conditions the use of CSC’s services is free-of-charge.

Policy covers following CSC’s services:

Following requirements are mandatory for all free-of-charge use.

The free-of-charge use for CSC’s services is possible primarily for users affiliated with research performing organizations:

• Finnish higher education institutions: universities and universities of applied sciences
• State research institutes  
• the National Archives of Finland

A CSC Project is needed to use the services. Every CSC project has a user who is a Project Manager. For free-of-charge use, the CSC Project Manager is required to have an affiliation with the organizations mentioned above. The Project Manager may apply for fixed-term accounts and project membership for collaborators outside the above-mentioned organizations.

CSC’s services are available for free-of-charge use only during active research. Free-of-charge-use is always connected to a particular project and its duration. CSC’s services for research are not permitted for use in continuous service production.

Free-of-charge use entails that research results must be published, preferably for peer review, and as openly as possible. For free use of services, it is sufficient that some part of the results is published.

The research should result in at least one of the following

• A scientific or scholarly publication
• A public research report
• A dataset available for academic research
• Some other research output available for academic research (including publications, learning materials, data, code, and algorithms)

CSC supports the FAIR principles (see our Data policy and Persistent Identifier (PID) policy).

Use in spesific cases

This section covers free-of-charge use in different cases that have their own requirements. All the above-mentioned mandatory requirements must be fulfilled in all these cases.

International collaboration

International collaborator(s) of research performing organizations can use CSC’s services free-of-charge for research and education if the results (e.g., knowledge, experience, publications, data) benefit research groups in Finland

CSC may offer resources free-of-charge to an international user, when CSC is a partner in a European research project. CSC reserves the right to decide this on a case-by-case basis. The decision will be based on CSC’s resource allocation principles and on the scope of the project

Education and training

The use of services is free-of-charge for arranging education and training by research performing organizations this in the following use cases:

• IT environments and basic support services for arranging a single course
• Thesis work and study assignments
• Research-based training intended for the academic community in state research institutes or the National Archives of Finland; for example, training on how to use or analyze datasets or materials provided by the organization

Company collaboration

The use of services is free-of-charge for research and education use cases for research performing organizations collaborating with commercial partners (e.g. private companies). In company collaboration, the above-mentioned mandatory requirements must be fulfilled for the use to be free of charge.  

CSC may grant fixed-term access to the services to a company representative that opens the company’s data for research use. Paid service activities provided by organizations such as commissioned research are not included within the scope of free use.

Government’s analysis, assessment, and research activities

Services are free of charge for joint research, analysis, and assessment activities coordinated by the Finnish government and carried out by research organizations.

Local support necessary for the use of CSC services for research

Support staff in the research performing organizations and in the Government ICT Center Valtori can use CSC’s services free-of-charge if it is necessary for supporting the use cases. Support refers to, for example, providing instructions, testing, or piloting the services.

Restrictions and special cases on the free-of charge use

Brokering CSC services for research is not allowed. Users utilizing CSC services free-of-charge cannot offer them to a third party as a paid service.

The free-of-charge use does not cover:

• Operative systems or services that require higher service level agreements (SLA) than CSC’s services normally provide (for example, requiring increased availability or customer support)
• Using CSC’s services as a platform for organizations’ own service production
• Building permanent services or infrastructures on top of CSC’s services
• Statutory duties as a public authority (in Finnish, viranomaistehtävät)
• Service production funded from the budget of the ministry responsible for ownership steering.
• Production use of learning management systems
• Production use of basic IT infrastructure for education
• Training that the research performing organizations provide as a paid service

The following are decided case by case:

• If a project managed by research performing organization needs to consume exceptionally large amount of resources at any point of the research project life-cycle, separate negotiations with CSC are required. These negotiations should preferably take place in the funding application phase. CSC reserves the right to decide on a case-by-case basis whether the resources can be offered within the free-of-charge use. More information about resource limits can be found on the Applying for resources page
• Use of the services for piloting IT solutions for education
• Use of the services for training targeted mainly at other than the research performing organizations

The policy is based on the agreement made with the Ministry of Education and Culture. 

This document may be published in several languages. In case of discrepancy the English language version shall prevail.

Definitions for the terminology used in this document

• “User” refers to an individual who uses any of the Services referred to in this document. 
• “CSC Project” refers to a group of one or more Users who may be granted access to use CSC’s computing, data, and cloud resources up to a certain limit. One of the Users acts as the Project Manager of the CSC Project. 
• “CSC Project Manager” refers to a User who has registered an Account and is responsible for a CSC Project.
• “CSC Project Member” is a User, who has an Account and who has been granted Project membership by the Project Manager.