Increase by 110% in the Number of Theses Downloaded During Pandemic
June 14, 2020 / Ankara
CoHE President Prof. M. A. Yekta Saraç stated that the number of theses downloaded from the CoHE National Thesis Center increased by 110% in May, compared to the figure in March when the novel Coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic started to be seen in Turkey.
In his statement, CoHE President said that the CoHE National Thesis Center is the only thesis center in Turkey where Master’s degree, doctoral, specialization in medicine and dentistry and proficiency in arts theses that are prepared at universities are collected and opened for students and researchers.
CoHE President Saraç stated that open access, which was included in the 2020 Presidential Program, was also added as one of the performance monitoring criteria of research universities by the Council of Higher Education.
Saraç noted that the “Higher Education Open Science and Access Working Group” was established under CoHE within the scope of the planning, implementation and coordination of works on open science and access, the establishment of an "Open Academic Archive System" at international standards at all universities and its integration with the European open access infrastructure. He also stated that concrete steps to be taken regarding open science and access were mentioned in the circular sent to universities within the scope of the action plan prepared by this working group.
- CoHE National Thesis Center has become a center of attraction for researchers
He noted that the Open Science and Access Policy, which was prepared to set an example for higher education institutions, was shared with universities, adding that they also took important steps in digitalization. Saraç said that they had witnessed the positive reflections of these steps during the coronavirus pandemic.
“The National Thesis Center has become a center of attraction for researchers during the pandemic. This showed the importance of the studies on open science and access initiated by CoHE in 2019. There has been an increase in the statistics on the use of the CoHE National Thesis Center, which is the only thesis center in Turkey where Master’s degree, doctoral, specialization in medicine and dentistry and proficiency in arts theses that are prepared at universities are collected and made available for academics, students and other researchers, during the COVID-19 pandemic. While the number of theses downloaded from the CoHE National Thesis Center was 1 million 5 thousand 124 in March, when the global pandemic started to spread in our country, this figure increased to 1 million 830 thousand 367 in April and to 2 million 116 thousand 560 in May with an increase of 110% compared to March. The number of theses downloaded from the CoHE National Thesis Center between 1 March 1st and May 31st rose to 4 million 952 thousand 51”.
- Works for “Software Project for CoHE Open Science System" continues
He underlined that CoHE continued to work for students and academics to produce high quality scientific publications.
"As we continue to work on digitalization, the Department of Information Technologies and the Department of Publication and Documentation carry out the software project for CoHE Open Science System within the framework of the works on open science and access. The system will allow open access to researchers by ensuring the bibliographic audit of postgraduate theses, articles, books, conference proceedings, and other publications written as a result of scientific activities at Turkish universities."
Source: Anadolu Agency