Speaker
Description
Türkiye has one of the largest higher education landscapes in Europe, with 208 universities. The 129 of these universities are financed publicly, and the rest are the private, foundation universities. By removing paywalls, open access has the power to enable universities in Türkiye to share valuable research with the global community while allowing them to take advantage of the latest international findings. Also, it fosters collaboration and fuels innovation in global scientific progress. So, for Türkiye, it has always been crucial to align with Europe and beyond in the Open Science movement to strengthen universities and empower the country to contribute to and benefit from the global knowledge pool. The Open Access movement in Türkiye began mainly with the activities of ANKOS (The Anatolian University Libraries Consortium) Open Access and Institutional Repositories (OAIR) Working Group in 2006. Especially after 2011, Open Access and Open Science practices have gained tremendous momentum at both policy and infrastructure levels due to participation in EC projects. Hacettepe University participated in MedOANet and PASTEUR4OA projects, and Izmir Institute of Technology (IZTECH) participated in the OpenairePlus Project in 2011, the OpenAIRE 2020 Project in 2015, and the OpenAIRE Advance Project in 2018. From December 2011 to February 2021, aiming to shift scholarly communication towards openness and transparency and facilitate innovative ways to communicate and monitor research, OpenAIRE projects strengthened the Turkish community in achieving its goals of open access and open science through its recommendations, knowledge sharing, good practices, and training activities within a well-connected network. Before the participation of the OpenAIRE projects in 2011, the number of institutional repositories (IR) was very few and there was no Open Access or Open Science policy in place. OpenAIRE projects have significantly impacted the establishment of essential infrastructures at international standards as a result of strong collaborations very closely with significant stakeholders, such as CoHE, TUBITAK ULAKBIM (The Scientific and Technological Research Council of Türkiye - Turkish Academic Network, and Information Center), and ANKOS (Anatolian University Libraries Consortium). Advocacy and negotiations with TUBITAK-ULAKBIM resulted in the establishment of a National Harvesting System called "Türkiye Academic Archive - Harman" (https://harman.ulakbim.gov.tr/). This portal contained 4.159.976 records from 166 institutions. TUBITAK-ULAKBIM DergiPark (https://dergipark.org.tr/en/), an open journal publishing system, includes 2825 journals and is one of the biggest OpenAIRE data providers. Aperta – Türkiye Open Archive (https://aperta.ulakbim.gov.tr/), a research data and publication repository for all researchers, includes 72.431 records. (All figures in this paragraph are based on data dated March 2024.) In 2010, the number of institutional repositories in DOAR from Türkiye was only 8, but by March 2024, this number had increased to 182. Türkiye is the 7th line in the world with the number of repositories, according to OpenDOAR Statistics. The number of IR is registered OpenAIRE 177, OpenDOAR 182, ROAR 169, and ROARMAP 116. Most of the institutions use the Dspace platform in Türkiye. Due to the need to develop an international standards research information system in Turkiye, Research Ecosystems Inc. was established in Technopark Izmir, the IZTECH's technopark. After signing a strategic cooperation agreement between Research Ecosystems Inc. and IZTECH, GCRIS, the first Research Information System in international standards in Turkiye, was developed with the support of artificial intelligence and continues to be improved. As a strategic partner, IZTECH started to use GCRIS as the first university in April 2021. There are six members currently using GCRIS in Turkiye. Some of the outstanding achievements towards Open Science Policy are the release of the first mandatory Open Access Policy by IZTECH in October 2013, the National Open Science Committee under TUBITAK, enacting OA to theses by the Parliament in March 2018, the launching of TÜBITAK Open Science Policy in March 2019. This policy was based on the OpenAIRE model Policy on Open Science for Research Funding Organisations (RFOs). Based on the OpenAIRE model Policy on Open Science for Research Performing Organisations (RPOs), the IZTECH Open Science Policy was approved on 26 March 2019. It was sent to other Turkish universities as a model policy by CoHE. With the participation of OpenAIRE projects, participated in 123 events (26 of which were international events), 100 presentations were made, and 15 webinars were organized. Twelve important events were held up. The Turkish Open Science Summit 2018 was a high-level meeting with decision-makers and key players. All stakeholders came together at the Turkish Open Science Summit for the first time. Therefore, it was a significant Open Science and Open Innovation event in Türkiye. When OpenAIRE became an association in 2019, IZTECH became one of its founding members, and IZTECH Library Director Gultekin Gurdal was elected board member. Also, IZTECH is one of the PATTERN (Piloting open and responsible Activities and Trainings Towards the Enhancement of Researchers Networks) and DIRNA (Developing Research Capacity through Institutional Repository Network in Azerbaijan) project partners. So, IZTECH continues to act as a bridge between Türkiye and the world on open science, open data, and integration with the EOSC, as well as spur the realization of critical OpenAIRE studies in the future. Last but not least, since 2021, transformative agreements have begun to be signed in Türkiye. TUBITAK and ANKOS, essential actors in Türkiye, make license agreements with publishers. TUBITAK EKUAL makes agreements for all universities under the name of Türkiye National Academic License for Electronic Resources in Türkiye. ANKOS makes an agreement for all universities, but institutions will decide whether to subscribe or not, and they pay their subscription price themselves. TUBITAK signed a transformative agreement in 2023 with Wiley and in 2024 with Springer. ANKOS has signed agreements with some publishers since 2021: American Chemical Society, American Computing Machinery, Cambridge University Press, IOPScience, and Karger Journals. Both of them aim to sign transformative agreements with more publishers. Some of the highlights from Türkiye about Open Science: 2013-Oct- First mandatory Open Access Policy released by IZTECH 2014-Jan- DergiPark, OA journal hosting service established by TUBITAK 2014-Feb- OA Policy template was prepared for CoHE to be sent to the HEIs 2014-Sep- The Driver Guide 2.0 translated into Turkish 2015-Jul- National Open Science Committee established under TUBITAK 2016-Oct- TUBITAK National Harvesting System: Türkiye Academic Archive - Harman 2018 -Jan- Aperta Turkiye Open Archive established by TUBITAK 2018-Mar- OA to Theses and Diss. in Türkiye enacted by the Parliament 2018-Sep- First Open Science Summit co-organized by the OpenAIRE NOAD 2018-Nov- CoHE established the Open Science Committee 2019- TUBITAK - Research Data Management Training Portal 2019-Mar- IZTECH Open Science Policy released 2019-Mar- TUBITAK Open Science Policy launched 2019-Nov- Higher Education Research Data and Open Data Sub-Working Group 2021- Aperta Turkiye Open Data Archive established by TUBITAK 2022- TUBITAK Open Science Portal 2022-Sep-IZTECH Research Data Management (RDM) Directory - Türkiye's first RDM Directory 2023-July- Within the scope of the EOSC Future Project, "European Open Science Cloud (EOSC) Trainer Training," hosted by IZTECH.
