The activities under the Project of National Academic License for Electronic Resources (EKUAL), commenced by TÜBİTAK ULAKBİM, were introduced at ATO Congresium.
The activities under the Project of National Academic License for Electronic Resources (EKUAL), which has been implemented by the Turkish National Academic Network and Information Center (ULAKBİM), Scientific and Technological Research Council of Turkey (TÜBİTAK) in order to reinforce the Turkish academic information infrastructure and to meet the national need for information as the basic input of R&D activities and which was expanded in 2018 with the support of the Ministry of Development, were introduced during an event held at ATO Congresium. During the even with 210 guests, Prof. Dr. Hasan Mandal, President of TÜBİTAK, Mehmet Mirat Satoğlu, Manager of ULAKBİM, and Emin Sadık Aydın, General Manager of Social Sectors and Coordination, Ministry of Development, each gave a speech.
Prof. Dr. Hasan Mandal, President of TÜBİTAK, stated approximately three million researchers had benefited from the Project of National Academic License for Electronic Resources (EKUAL), initiated by the Turkish National Academic Network and Information Center (ULAKBİM).
Prof. Dr. Mandal noted a number of license agreements had been concluded for international e-information resources under the EKUAL Project and “Approximately 3 million researchers from 257 organizations and associated entities, including all the state and private universities in Turkey and TRNC as well as training and research hospitals of the Ministry of Health, have been benefiting from the National Academic License for Electronic Resources provided by the Turkish National Academic Network and Information Center,” he added.
Prof. Dr. Mandal said the Ministry of Development supported this project with 85 million Turkish Liras, thanks to which the project has been significantly improved. He also pointed out that the EKUAL Project enables access to 18 e-databases, two plagiarism analysis software, one reference management tool, 30 thousand electronic journals, 100 million bibliographic data records, three million conference proceedings, 2.1 million master’s theses and doctorate dissertations, and “We decisively intend to improve the service of EKUAL further. We need to increase access to information, improve competitiveness, pave the way for and increase the number of researchers so that Turkey can achieve the common goals more easily,” he added.
Emin Sadık Aydın, General Manager of Social Sectors and Coordination, Ministry of Development, promised that they would always enable improvement of the National Academic and R&D activities in respect of significance of and access to information, adopting the motto of EKUAL: “INFORMATION IS POWER.”