President of the Scientific and Technological Research Council of Turkey (TÜBİTAK) Prof. and Hasan Mandal joins the "Open Science Summit of Turkey 2018" hosted by Sabanci University at the Sakip Sabanci Museum. Speaking at the summit, Prof. and Hasan Mandal said that when we look at Turkey's current deficit in high-tech products export, the situation is underwhelming. Prof. and Hasan Mandal said, “When we look at other countries with which we refer ourselves, this figure is 25 percent in China, 27 percent in South Korea and 16 percent in the European Union. If there really is a plan to produce high-tech information production, then cooperation and open innovation are needed. The need for open science and open access will find itself as a value chain not only in the academic field but also in the business world.” Prof. Dr. Mandal stated that, within the scope of open access activities in Turkey, TÜBİTAK ULAKBİM was involved in the process since the beginning, and that accessible data were being collected at “arşiv.ulakbim.gov.tr”, and at present, over 500 thousand works from 62 institutions have been brought together. Prof. Dr. Hasan Mandal pointed out that an important part of these works are TÜBİTAK-oriented articles and through the DergiPark system. In his speech, Prof. Dr. Hasan Mandal said, “Our universities have started this process strongly. TÜBİTAK and YÖK need to embrace this process further, because as long as these studies do not turn into a national high policy, the continuity of that excitement in our universities is limited. In Open Access Week, which will take place on 22-28 October 2018, we will come up with a new interface for “aperta.ulakbim.gov.tr”. Through this interface, we are working on a policy document in TÜBİTAK-oriented processes. Here, our most important stakeholder institution is YÖK. We want to transform these studies into a policy document in cooperation with YÖK. At the end of October we will open “aperta.ulakbim.gov.tr” and share the data we have on it.”
"Turkey's Most Important Requirement is to Produce Their Own High-tech Products”
President of TÜBİTAK Prof. and Mandal stated that Turkey's most important agenda regarding difficulties is the current deficit, and talked about the actions that could be taken to eliminate it. Prof. Dr. Mandal pointed out that Turkey needs to increase the share of producing their own high-tech products, and continued on to add, "If Turkey cannot develop its own local and national high-tech products, the current deficit may perhaps be delayed by other methods. However, if we cannot find a solution to this problem, the current deficit will continuously be on our agenda in the medium and long term. It is possible to solve this problem by increasing our share of high-tech products. What we need is to develop more domestic and national products with our own technology and further cooperate with the world. For this, both the academic world and the business world need to develop models in order to work together. TÜBİTAK has initiated new processes aimed at both technological development and product development for the high-tech products it has recently attempted to manufacture in particular. The models created with the new Presidential Government System especially demand works in this direction. Turkey now has its own programs to develop its own local and national products. We call them the high-technology platforms.”
PhD Program in Industry
President of TÜBİTAK Prof. Dr. Mandal pointed out that one of the concepts involved in high-tech product processes is the need for qualified human resources and that the recent PhD Program in Industry, which was recently brought to the agenda, was purely for this purpose. Prof. Dr. Mandal stated that the “Turning To Our Country Mobilization Program” included in the government's 100-day Action Plan also has this aim and continued to add, “We are currently at the last stage of this Program. Soon our Honorable Minister will introduce a strong and unique support program focusing on bringing our own human resources who are abroad and new qualified human resources from other countries to Turkey. Our Honorable Minister will share the developments related to the program with the public soon.
Prof. Dr. After Mandal's speech, the CEO of Sabanci Holding Mehmet Göçmen gave a speech on "Open Innovation, Industry Perspective". The Summit continued throughout the day with "Open Science Policies, Infrastructures and Their Impact on Innovation in Europe”, "European Open Science Cloud and OpenAIRE", "Open Science in Practice" sessions.