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6th National Open Access Conference and the OpenAIRE2020 Turkish Workshop Declaration

6th National Open Access Conference and the OpenAIRE2020 Turkish Workshop Declaration
With the theme “Open Science for a Better Future", the 6th National Open Access Conference and OpenAIRE Workshop took place at Ege University Ataturk Cultural Center in Izmir, during 24-25 October 2017, hosted by Izmir Institute of Tehcnology. The aim of the event was to raise to awareness on open access, open science and open data and draw attention to harmonization of Open access policy, strategy, legislation, infrastructure and services in Turkey  with the European Union (EU).  Nearly 300 people from the public and private sectors, including the rectors of various universities, attended the conference and 600 people also followed the conference via web.



The following declaration and proposals prepared by the Organizing Committee at the end of the event has been decided to be shared with decision makers who shape our country's science and technology policies, institutions that support and conduct research,  researchers, delegates participating in the workshop and the public.


Online access to scientific publications and research data have become the most important requirement to do science, create technological innovation and develop of economy and human. But scientific publications and research data are generally not to open everyone. The license fees for scientific journals are increasing rapidly year after year.

According to the European Commission (EC), everyone's access to the scientific research outputs is an indispensable component of "Open Science" and open access is mandated to all peer review publications supported by Horizon 2020. Open Access (AE) means that everyone can access freely to scientific research outputs funded with public money. EC has launched a project (European Open Science Cloud) with a budget of around seven billion euros in 2016, to open information and data in scientific publications to everyone's use. The European University Association (EUA) is leading the transformation of the scientific communication system in order to open access for all scientific publications until 2020 and reach Open Science goals for universities.

Turkey will have to establish a standards-compliant and interoperable Open Science and Open Access infrastructure, including scientific publications and research data and the relevant legislation and policies without further delay in order to integrate with the European Research Area, the European Open Science Cloud and the Open Access Infrastructure (OpenAIRE Plus) and to maximize benefit from Horizon 2020 research funds. It is appreciated that in recent years, the concepts of Open Science and Open Access have been started to discuss in higher education environment, ministries and institutions funding public research, and  think more intensively on the relevant policies. Many universities have established their own open archives. The Scientific and Technological Research Council of Turkey -TÜBİTAK has started to work to set up its own open archive and to harvest the contents of other open archives. It is expected that these studies will contribute to the establishment of the Open Science and Open Access infrastructure and the development of relevant legislation and policies. This will make it easier to enrich existing open archives, to make everyone accessible to research outputs and research data funded by publicly through public archives. The Organizing Committee and the participants agreed to emphasize once again the following suggestions should be made as soon as possible and all stakeholders (researchers, university administrators, ministries, funders, librarians, users, etc.) must fulfill their duties.

To support Open Access to publications related to publicly funded research and research data and Open Science, legal arrangements should be made and necessary infrastructure should be established in compliance with European Union (EU) legislation at national level.

Ministries providing research support, such as TUBITAK and the Higher Education Council (YÖK), and universities should develop their own Open Access policies. Open Access policies must be mandatory but incentive and supported by facilitators such as infrastructure, training, article processing fees.

The existing Open Access policies of universities and research institutions should be further be strengthened and aligned with related policies of the European Commission. The Council of Higher Education and The Inter University Board (ÜAK) should ensure the development and implementation of these policies.

Researcher ID (for example, ORCID) and project numbers should be part of the infrastructure to increase the visibility of scientific publications and to provide interoperability.

The efforts to integrate existing IR with the European Open Access and research infrastructure (OpenAIRE) should be speeded up by primarily making use of open source applications.

Depositing the output of research projects (publications and data) in IR and making them Open Access should be the prerequisite of getting research funds and be linked with the research evaluation process.

Compliance with Open Access policies should be monitored by research funders and universities.

Open Access publication expenses of TÜBİTAK Projects should be paid from Project budget.

Open Access publication expenses should be paid for by the research grants and TÜBİTAK’s National Academic Network and Information Center (ULAKBİM) and ANKOS should sign offset agreements with publishers to recoup these costs.

In license agreements making with publishers by TUBITAK National Academic Network and Information Center (ULAKBİM) and Anatolian University Library Consortium (ANKOS) should be included regulating articles of Open Access. The contracts containing articles that prevents sharing of information about license fees with third parties should not be signed.

Authors’ copies of refereed articles that are accepted for publication should be immediately deposited in IRs along with their metadata. Metadata of such publications should be made Open Access immediately while their full-texts should be done so by taking publishers’ open access policies into account.

Copyright legislation should be revised so as to cover Open Science, Open Access, research data, and text and data mining (TDM) issues.

Creative Commons licenses (CC-BY) should be used in order to provide Open Access to publicly funded research output.

Professional associations, small and medium-size enterprises (SMEs) and the industry experiencing more difficulties in getting access to scientific information should also be considered as the stakeholders of Open Science and Open Access.Respectfully announced to the public.
Respectfully announced to the public.
For communication:
Gültekin GürdalCoordinator of OpenAIRE2020 (Turkey) and Library Director, IZTECH
Tel: 232 750 63 31
E-mail: gultekingurdal@iyte.edu.tr
Mehmet Mirat SatoğluDirector of TÜBİTAK ULAKBİM
Tel: 312 298 9302
E-mail: mirat.satoglu@tubitak.gov.tr
Yaşar TontaHacettepe University Department of Information Science
Tel: 312 297 82 04
E-mail: yasartonta@gmail.com 
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