The growing number of academic information sources in electronic medium and their high prices has caused libraries to seek alternative access and pricing models.

Being a national center, ULAKBİM, in accordance with its service policy, aims and objectives, using the National Academic Network (UlakNET) infrastructure, has provided a new alternative in subscription to electronic sources, namely, TÜBİTAK EKUAL Project.

The scope of the project covers the negotiations for national licence agreements with leading publishers and database producers of the world, with the aim of providing effective and widespread access to academic electronic information sources for the research institutions in our country and increasing the number and efficiency of scientific publications in national and international scale.

Academic electronic databases, which are important tools to aid research and development activities, the production of new scientific information, products, processes, methods and systems, to increase the number of highly qualified scientists and scholars, and to enhance their competitive power in scientific research in national and international scale, form the basis of TÜBİTAK EKUAL Project.

The project has been implemented following the TÜBİTAK Science Committee resolution dd. 19.11.2005 / no 136, to be supported within the context of TARAL Programme, and Training and Research Hospitals affiliated to the Ministry of Health are included upon the resolution dd. 11.02.2006 / no 139 by TÜBİTAK Science Committee.

TÜBİTAK EKUAL Aims at

• creating equal opportunity of access to scientific resources for research institutions having lower budgets,
• helping researchers save time enabling the efficient use of databases,
• increasing the efficiency of research activities nationwide,
• ensuring economic use of the country's resources,
• increasing the production of scientific publications in the national and international scale,
• enhancing the competitive power of our country in scientific research.

TÜBİTAK EKUAL Context

• At present, National Academic Licence agreement has been signed by over 180 institutions across the country; including 126 universities, 6 military institutions, 53 Training and Research Hospitals, and TÜBİTAK and its institutes.
• 20 full-text and bibliographic academic databases have been offered to the use of researchers as of March 2008.
• Access has been provided to 9.888 full-text academic journals, 725.000 conference proceedings, and 1.800 standards.
• About 1.168.690 researchers have been using academic EKUAL databases nationwide.
• 68.636.000 items take place in the bibliographic databases, and around 39.000 journals are being indexed.