CoHE’s Policy on Open Science and Open Access Garners Interest in Theses
January 11, 2021
Researchers continue to show more interest in the YÖK National Thesis Center, the only center where theses for master’s degree, doctoral degree, specialization in medicine, specialization in dentistry, and proficiency in arts are collected and opened for research in full texts.
The thesis center had 87.587.547 pageviews in 2020 and there has been a massive increase in the number of users, the number of theses registered in the database, the number of newly-added theses, and the number of downloads compared to the previous year.
- The number of users benefitting from the thesis center reached 6 million
According to 2020 data, the number of users benefiting from the YÖK National Thesis Center has increased by 20% compared to the previous year and reached 6.040.016. The number of people using the system was 5.036.614 in 2019. Therefore, it was observed that more than 1 million new users used the system in a year.
While the number of theses in the center has reached 645.089 with the addition of 50 thousand theses in 2020, the number of downloads has become 17.126.496.
- The rate of accessibility to the theses added in 2019 has exceeded 97%
As a result of the legal process initiated by the initiatives of the "New CoHE” for the open access of theses, the rate of accessibility of the theses added in 2019 has exceeded 97%. It is also considered that making theses more accessible plays an essential role especially in the increased interest of researchers in the center.
- “National Academic Open Access System” will be established
Within the framework of the works of “Open Science and Open Access” carried out by CoHE, it is aimed to establish a “National Academic Open Access System” at international standards at all universities in Turkey.
As a result of the implementation of the National Academic Open Access System, the publications of Turkish universities will become more visible in international systems and Turkish scientists will be better known.
As the international visibility of scientific studies carried out in our country increases, there will be a very positive effect on the evaluation of Turkish universities by various rating agencies around the world.
- The first stage of the works for “Open Science and Open Access” will be completed
CoHE established the “Higher Education Open Science and Access Working Group” to plan, implement and coordinate the works on open science and open access, to establish an "Open Academic Archive System" at international standards at all universities and to develop and maintain these systems.
The circular, which was sent to universities within the scope of the action plan prepared by the working group, gave information on the concrete steps to be taken regarding open science and open access and included a sample policy on these topics.
The YÖK Open Science System aims to host all scientific publications published in Turkey and is planned to be carried out according to a three-stage work plan. In the first stage, CoHE worked on the transfer of all the theses in the YÖK Thesis Center to the system to increase their international visibility and to allow other international systems to access them. This stage is about to be completed and YÖK Open Science System is planned to be opened in the first half of 2021.
The process will continue with the integration of the system with YÖKSİS and will be finalized with the merging of academic open archives at universities with the system.
- It was also included in the 11th Development Plan
The works on open science and open access, which were initiated by CoHE, were included with the following statement under the title “Education, Policies and Measures”: “Compliance with open access infrastructures will be ensured in order for universities to keep up with the digital age and to implement open access and open science practices in access to information.”