September 10, 2018, Sakıp Sabancı Museum, Istanbul

Science is universal.  Scientific and technological research is usually funded by public monies.  Scientific knowledge produced during this process is therefore considered as a “commons”.  The more the scientific knowledge gets shared, the more its overall value increases.  “Open Science” is defined as open access to both scientific publications and the research data on which publications are based.  Driven by its digital single market strategy, the European Union (EU) has been developing the European Open Science Cloud (EOSC) and OpenAIRE services to make it easier to get access to, store, share and re-use scientific information and research data.  EOSC aims to foster scientific cooperation among universities, public and industrial sectors by providing access to publications and data available on its platform to both researchers and citizens.

The objective is to streamline the scientific, technological and societal developments by carrying out scientific studies according to the “Open Science Paradigm”.  In order to get financial support for scientific projects from the EU, publications and data generated by the funded projects should conform to the FAIR principles (findability, accessibility, interoperability, and re-usability).  A global, open initiative called GO FAIR has been launched to increase the awareness of Open Science Paradigm and FAIR principles.

In order to review such developments on Open Science and Open Access, to discuss their implications on research funding practices in Turkey, and to provide a platform so that a policy can be developed in this respect in the near future, Sabancı University is to host the “Turkish Open Science Summit 2018” to be held at the Sakıp Sabancı Museum (SSM) in Istanbul.  The Summit will take place with the participation of the administrators of EU, the Turkish Higher Education Council (YÖK), and the Turkish Scientific and Technological Research Council (TÜBİTAK), university rectors, high-level representatives of industrial organizations and NGOs such as European Univeristy Association (EUA) and European Universities Information Systems (EUNIS).

Organization Committee of the Turkish Open Science Summit 2018