Sciecom Info 3 (2011) Hedlund The Finnish Open Access working group (FinnOA) was founded in 2003 in Helsinki by professionals in academia, libraries, learned societies and publishers. FinnOA was started as an informal working group with the aim to promote open access to scientific research. The group has retained its informal status but during the years it has by initiatives and seminars initiated projects for developing an infrastructure for open access in publication archives and publishing of open access scientific journals. Lately the aim of the working group has been to promote a broader spectrum of access to research, including research data. For this article three members of the FinnOA working group; LL.D Marjut Salokannel (chair of FinnOA), Ph.D. Claus Montonen, Head of publishing Eeva- Liisa Aalto were interviewed about their membership and activities in the working group and how they see the future for open access. The discussion started with the question on why each member started to promote open access and joined the FinnOA working group. Claus Montonen, physicist by profession and a background in the research tradition in high-energy physics was one of the founding members of FinnOA in 2003. At that time he was active in the European Physical Society and chair of their publications committee and an early promoter of open access. As we know, this scientific discipline was the forerunner in open access publishing introducing the submission of pre-print manuscripts to the subject-based archive arXiv. Claus Montonen found it natural to join the national FinnOA working group when it was started. Head of publishing Ms Eeva-Liisa Aalto from the Federation of learned societies was also a founder of the FinnOA working group. In Finland learned societies have a national co-operative body for learned societies in Finland called the Federation of learned societies. The learned societies are also very important academic publishers of periodicals and books. The professional interest in academic publishing thus provided Eeva-Liisa Aalto with an incentive to join the FinnOA working group. The Federation of learned societies has hosted many seminars arranged by FinnOA during the years and they also started a project to supports its member societies to convert to e-journal publishing preferably also to open access publishing. The present chair of FinnOA, LL.D Marjut Salokannel is a researcher in intellectual property rights focusing on the socio-economic dimension of patent and copyright law. Her research interests in science policy and access to publicly funded scientific research and information lead her to join the FinnOA working group and since then she has actively promoted open access initiatives and mandates in the University of Helsinki as well as a national science policy and intellectual property right legislation regarding open access to research data. During the years The FinnOA working group has been active mainly in three main areas: policy building initiatives, supporting an infrastructure of repositories for open access copies of research articles and supporting open access journal publishing. As examples of policy initiatives in Finland where FinnOA members have participated, can be mentioned reports published by the Ministry of Education. In 2005 a memorandum on recommendations for the promotion of open access in scientific publishing in Finland and in 2011 a roadmap for the utilization of electronic data in research. The project OA-JES (2006-2008) promoted the ongoing work in starting, maintaining and improving institutional repositories in the universities and research institutes. Also the support to learned societies in Finland in publishing open access journal was carried out together with the Federation of Learned Societies. Eeva-Liisa Aalto pointed out the important issue of publishing in national languages as a strong motive for support to learned societies. We need to keep up a scientific discussion in the national languages and it is also important for making research known to a broader national audience. All three interviewees found that there is a maturity process going on in open access activities. The infrastructure is mostly in place and there is knowledge about open access within the research communities. Also within the FinnOA working group the first intensive years has passed and there is a need to make strategies for the future. OPEN MINDS TOWARDS OPEN ACCESS: -An interview with members of the FinnOA working group Turid Hedlund