YUFE (Young Universities for the Future of Europe)

Work packages in YUFERING

WP1 Management and Coordination

WP2 The YUFE model towards a community engagement-based research & innovation agenda

WP3 YUFE as a catalyst for flipped knowledge transfer and deployment in society

WP4 Transforming recognition, reward and circulation of talents and teams across Europe

WP5 Open Science: establishing the New Normal

WP6 Dissemination, Exploitation & Communication

University of Eastern Finland in YUFERING

UEF is involved in all the work packages of YUFERING.

One of the aims of YUFERING (work packages 4 and 5) is to create a tool that would recognise the broad variety of performance and achievements that academic staff have. To that end, the developed YUFERING impact portfolio attempts to recognise academics’ achievements not only in the core areas of research and teaching, but also in community engagement and societal outreach, and in teamwork, management, and leadership. In the portfolio, emphasis is on academics’ qualitative achievements and their impact, presented by the academics themselves. This makes it possible for researchers to bring out their individual strengths.

The YUFERING impact portfolio also identifies academics’ achievements in open science, including open publications, open data, open education, and open research culture. The aim of the impact portfolio is to help decision-makers doing researcher assessment make more nuanced and informed decisions, for example, in recruitment, promotion, and rewarding.

Outputs and activities

Kekäle, Jouni; Saarti, Jarmo (2020). Avoimen tieteen pitää hyödyttää kaikkia. Acatiimi 24(6), 48.

Kekäle, Jouni; Pietilä, Maria; Saarti, Jarmo & Rintamäki, Katri (2021). Reward Systems for Opening Data: Good Practices for Open Science? 43rd Annual Forum of the EAIR – The European Higher Education Society (EAIR Forum 2021), 9-11 September 2021, Humboldt Universität zu Berlin, Germany.

Kekäle, Jouni (2022). Tutkijanarviointien kansainväliset kehittämistarpeet. Puheenvuoroja University of Eastern Finland, 6.9.2022.

Pietilä, Maria; Kekäle, Jouni & Rintamäki, Katri (2022). Tutkimuksen arviointi muutoksessa. Tieteessä Tapahtuu 40(4), 41–44.

Pietilä, Maria; Rintamäki, Katri; Aguilera, Raúl; Fernández del Pino, Belén; Méndez, Eva, & Bautista-Puig, Núria (2022, September 7). Open Science Assessment and Incentives at the YUFE Alliance. 26th International Conference on Science, Technology and Innovation Indicators (STI 2022), Granada, Spain. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.6974766 

Pietilä, Maria; Kekäle, Jouni, Rintamäki, Katri (2022). High hopes and unmet expectations: adding open science elements in individual-level research assessment. Bibliometrics and Research Policy, Nordic Workshop (2022): NWB2022. Figshare. Presentation. https://doi.org/10.6084/m9.figshare.21293310.v1 

Panel ‘Research Assessment Under Scrutiny: towards more holistic and qualitative-oriented systems’ organized at the CHER Conference 2022 (Consortium for Higher Education Researchers). Coordinators:

Jouni Kekäle & Maria Pietilä. Panelists: Ingvild Reymert, Alex Rushforth & Malcom Tight.

Rintamäki, Katri & Pietilä, Maria (2022). Tutkimuksen tuki yhdistää kirjastoja Euroopan reunalta toiselle. Signum 54(4), 33–36.

Saarti, Jarmo; Rintamäki, Katri, & Hartikainen, Kaisa (2022). Eurooppalaiset yliopistoverkostot tarjoavat uusia mahdollisuuksia kirjastojen kehittämiseen. Signum, 53(3), 20–24.

Kekäle, Jouni & Pietilä, Maria (2023). YUFERING Portfolio in researcher assessment. Presentation at the 2nd TORCH Annual Forum, 8 March, 2023, Trinity College Dublin.

Inno4YUFE aims to remove barriers to student entrepreneurship and to reinforce the role of higher education institutions (HEIs) as launchpads for entrepreneurial career pathways.

The Inno4YUFE project will focus on six actions:

1. Integrate an Innovation and Entrepreneurship dimension in the YUFE Virtual Campus (VC) providing an open collaboration platform for YUFE students interested in entrepreneurship and innovation.
2. Establish a virtual YUFE Flipped Knowledge Transfer Office designed to support and mentor YUFE student entrepreneurs and researchers and enable the exchange of best practices.
3. Build sustainable collaborations with the three selected EIT Knowledge and Innovation Communities (health, digital, raw materials) with the goal of achieving a pan-European network of innovation communities.
4. Develop a novel Research and Innovation Training and Mentoring Programme to enhance the innovation and entrepreneurship mindset of YUFE students and staff.
5. Launch a YUFE-wide Entrepreneurial Internship Programme, aimed at providing entrepreneurial students with unique know-how on innovation processes, start-up implementation and entrepreneurial skills.
6. Create a YUFE International Start-up Community and Acceleration Programme to boost YUFE support for student start-ups.

For more information, please see INNO4YUFE project website.

The EU-funded DIOSI project

1. has developed a new holistic model for doctoral education, which will be piloted within YUFE,
2. has developed and provided training on open science and open innovation and entrepreneurship targeted for doctoral researchers using a train-the-trainers method
3. aims to measure the impact of the training by creating an impact and graduate tracking framework.

The DIOSI partners have strong collaboration ties and include the YUFE universities (Young Universities for the Future of Europe European University Alliance) and one business partner, InnoEXC GMBH. With this project, the partners aim to boost their DCs' and ECRs' skills training and future careers.

For more information, please see the DIOSI website