TUBITAK’s Incentive Program for International Scientific Publications Originating from Turkey (UBYT), which has made important contributions to adopting the habit of publishing in international indexes in our country, has been updated to improve the quality of broadcasting, which is one of the most important objectives of the program. With this in mind, an analysis of the current system and the UBYT data of the previous years was made and the related evaluation report was sent to all university libraries. In addition to the findings and recommendations of the study, meetings were held with the Vice Rectors of the research universities to update the UBYT program and the opinions and recommendations in the meetings were taken into consideration in the design of the new UBYT program.
Regulations made on UBYT Principles include many new procedures for the use of resources to incentivize quality. New procedures can be summarized as follows:
- Article Influence Score Instead of Grouping: Academic studies in the field of bibliometry examine the differences in citation patterns and the extent to which an academic publication can be measured by bibliometric data. A prominent method in these studies in spite of some known issues or deficiencies related to citation measurements, is the “Article Influence Score”. The article influence score represents the world average in a field with a value of “1.0”. It was preferred that the AIS value be used directly instead of a grouping with a normalization purpose, among sciences in the new UBYT program.
- Threshold Value: A threshold value was determined for the journals listed in the Journal Citation Reports (JCR) index to receive incentives. The incentive amount calculated according to the AIS value of the International Scientific Journals will be different. In order to receive incentives, publications need to be included in journals above the AIS value of "0.25” or be included in journals originating in Turkey. As a result of the regulation made, an increase is expected in the resources to be used by the UBYT program and 81% of the journals will be incentivized with higher amounts than the previous year.
- Increase in the Maximum Incentive Amount: With the Implementing Procedures and Principles of the UBYT Program in 2019, UBYT payment parameters have been changed and minimum and maximum incentive amounts have become TL 500-15,000 respectively. Thus, the upper limit of incentives for journals over twice and journals over three times the value of 1.0 AIS, which is the world average, has been increased.
- Apportionment Between Co-authors: It has been decided that when the AIS has passed the average of 1.0, the apportionment be made equal only between authors originating from Turkey, and authors originating from foreign countries not be included in the calculation of the incentive amount. In this way, incentivizing international cooperation and including researchers in large working groups to the incentive scope has been aimed.
- Positive Discrimination to Journals Originating From Turkey: Among the innovations made in the UBYT programs positive discrimination has been practiced in journals originating from Turkey, and the Academic Journal Coefficient for TUBITAK has been determined as 2 and the Coefficient for Journals Originating From Turkey has been determined as 1,5.
According to the new UBYT regulation, it was decided to set a fixed journal fee in the relevant year for AHCI journals due to the fact that the AISs of AHCI journals in the Web of Science™ Core Collection databases were not calculated by JCR. The procedure of paying the consultant applying for a Consultant Incentive three times the amount of the incentive offered per author in the Researcher Incentive procedure, will continue in 2019 as well.
The Implementing Procedures and Principles of the UBYT Program and Journal List will be announced to the public on ulakbim.gov.tr.