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The National Research Environment

Turkey is about to be one of the biggest higher education landscape with the 185 universities in Europe.  The 113 of these universities are financed publicly, and the 74 left are the private universities who are also performing the higher education activities in the national and international level. Yüksek Öğretim Kurulu (The Council of Higher Education- YÖK) has been administrating the activities of the universities in Turkey.

Major research funders

TThe Major Research Funder in Turkey is “Türkiye Bilimsel ve Teknolojik Araştırma Kurumu (The Scientific and Technological Research Council of Turkey-TÜBİTAK). The Scientific and Technological Research Council of Turkey is the leading agency for management, funding and conduct of research in Turkey. It was established in 1963 with a mission to advance science and technology, conduct research and support Turkish researchers. The Council is an autonomous institution and is governed by a Scientific Board whose members are selected from prominent scholars from universities, industry and research institutions. TÜBİTAK is responsible for promoting, developing, organizing, conducting and coordinating research and development in line with national targets and priorities. From now, Bilim, Sanayi ve Teknoloji Bakanlığı (Ministry of Science, Industry and Technology) has been aiming the national research environement with a view to enhance the competitiveness of the country in the international level by supporting the activities on developping and implementing policies, strategies, plans and programs on science, industry and technology, promoting the adoption of a scientific approach and understanding in the society as the society is transformed into an information society, and  providing the necessary conditions for a safe, sustainable, efficient, environmental-friendly production which is based on high technology. Anadolu Üniversite Kütüphaneleri Konsorsiyumu Derneği (Anatolian University Libraries Consortium Association-ANKOS) is also supporting the Open Access Initiatives and studies via the ANKOS Open Access and Institutional Repositories Working Group (ANKOS OAIR). The Turkish Higher Education Council (YÖK) established the YÖK Open Access Working Group on the January, 2014. This working group will be direct reporting of the Higher Education Council.  This working group aims to provide that each single institution would create its own institutional repository according to a National Open Access Policy which would be prepared and also to unite and harvest these repositories under a National Open Access Initiative.

Open Access and Repositories

Starting from 2006 the Open Access term is started to be known at the Turkish academic community and the libraries and Information Centers has performed some activities. With the aim of creating awareness on open access, these initiatives have led to the setting up of institutional archives, especially in universities. These archives were analyzed by consulting the Directory of Open Access Repositories (OpenDOAR) and the Registry of Open Access Repositories (ROAR). Izmir Institute of Technology, the Turkish Partner of the OpenAIREplus Project, has become the first institution in Turkey which agreed to adopt a “mandate policy” in Turkey on Open Access; and the other institutions that are supporting the Open Access activities have been working on to create their repositories and make the authors and researchers share their studies in these repositories by developing this issue.

Open Access Repositories

Even the Open Access studies have been still developing in Turkey these are some repositories which were registered to OpenDOAR and ROAR, too. There are 45 repositories which are registered to the OpenDOAR, and 27 repositories which are registered to ROAR. Starting from the First National Open Access Workshop, ANKOS OAIR announced that it would support the DSpace Institutional Repositories Open Source Software by helping the institutions both by presenting and setting up the system in to the institutional archive system.

Open Access Publishing

According to the Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ) December 2014 data there are 290 Turkish OA journals which were registered to DOAJ. Some of these journals are hosted by OA journal platforms, but most are run individually by research institutions and learned societies. ANKOS OAIR is the Turkish partner of DOAJ for the first evaluation of the journals that applied to register into DOAJ from Turkey. The registered journal number to the TÜBİTAK-ULAKBİM DergiPark Project has been 400 since it has been started with 150 Journals.

Open Access projects and initiatives

Useful links and resources

Contributors Contact Details
Mr. Gultekin GURDAL
Library Director of Izmir Institute of Technology
Email:  gultekingurdal@iyte.edu.tr
Tel: +902327506331