“Research results financially supported by public resources should be in an electronic environment and accessible free of charge”. This is the purpose of the open access movement.

 

In the Budapest Open Access Initiative statement published in 2001, Open Access is defined as “the scientific literature’s free availability on the public internet, permitting any users to read, download, copy, distribute, print, search, or link to the full texts of these articles, crawl them for indexing, pass them as data to software, or use them for any other lawful purpose, without financial, legal, or technical barriers.”.

 

Open Access, a social movement devoted to the sharing of information in order to create common interests in the academic community, is supported by many scientists, publishers and researchers around the world. Anadolu University Libraries Consortium (ANKOS) has also supported open access endavours on free access to the research results through the public Internet and using this literature for various purposes without financial, legal and technical barriers.

 

In 2006, a working party named Open Access and Institutional Archives (AEKA) was established under ANKOS to create basis for initiatives in the various levels for open access archive building process in Turkey, and to support, advise and to share the findings of model applications and trainings.

 

AEKA Group’s aims are;

 

• to lead the establishment of the Open Access movement in Turkey

• to inform the public and professionals on the efforts made in the world and Turkey towards the Open Access and Institutional Archives,

• To assist the spread of Open Access awareness among academic institutions and the implementation of applications,

• Demonstrate a method for creating Institutional Archives in academic institutions,

• To cooperate so that the works can be carried out in coordination,

• To add the educational and supplementary documents on the AEKA website and ensure that they are up-to-date and reliable.

AEKA Group’s work continues to increase everyday on creating awareness among information professionals in Turkey, enabling ANKOS researchers’(information professionals’) cooperation on related applications with the mission to cooperate with both Turkish and foreign institutions working towards Open Access and Institutional Archives.