Evaluating institutional repositories and open access policies of Turkish universities

Open access as a concept focuses on free of charge and remote accessibility of scientific publications. In this respect, open access refers to a method for unlimited and effective distribution of produced scientific knowledge. In other words, open access is defined as a mechanism that makes scientific knowledge available to readers and researchers free of cost and any other barriers. The accessibility of scientific publications is of great importance for researchers to conduct their projects and thus for academic development. However, there are several problems in Turkey regarding accessibility of scientific publications to people and spread of knowledge. Studies, focusing on open access, are available in Turkey to eradicate problems. Leading institutions responsible for conducting studies on open access and institutional archiving in Turkey are Higher Education Council (YÖK) and universities. YÖK, in this respect, convened a meeting, titled "Open Access and Open Science", with Inter-Universities Council (ÜAK) in January 2019. In the meeting, it was declared that universities shall report and regularly present their activities regarding open access studies. From this point, this thesis will elaborate practices so far and YÖK's open access initiative. It is aimed to discover the impacts of YÖK's open access initiative on universities' policies. The thesis will make it possible to compare and contrast the open access and institutional archiving activities of universities before and after YÖK's open access initiative. It will also pave the way for recommendations regarding future policies on open access and open science. For the purposes of analysis, the thesis will provide relevant data set from universities' open access and institutional archiving systems and June 2019, January 2020 and June 2020 reports of YÖK's Department of Publication and Documentation regarding open access initiative.