TAGES CEO Leyla Arsan has participated as a panelist to “Open Science Ecosystem Panel” which was organized on 22 October 2020. The panel was in the scope of “International Open Data Week” and broadcasted live from Creative Commons Turkey’s Youtube channel.
This year the International Open Access Week is celebrated all over the world between 19-25October, 2020. OPENAIRE Turkey Help Desk organized a panel called “Open Science Ecosystem Panel” which was held within the framework of ‘Open Access to Build Structural Equality and Inclusion’ theme. Many researchers and entrepreneurs from Turkey joined the panel to understand and follow the process of open data ecosystem.
İzmir İnstitute of Technology Library (IYTE) Director Gültekin Gürdal moderated the panel and made an opening speech about how the pandemic process affected the developments related to open science and emphasized the importance of the need for open data in this period.
TAGES CEO Leyla Arsan, TÜBİTAK ULAKBİM Director M. Mirat Satoğlu and Assoc. Dr. Gökhan Kiper discussed different aspects of the open science ecosystem and participatory and innovative approaches to global problems.
TÜBİTAK ULAKBİM Director M. Mirat Satoğlu started to his speech by sharing TÜBİTAK ULAKBİM’s studies on open data. He emphasized that when they increase resource transfers to researches, the quality expands. He also mentioned about TÜBİTAK’s open data platform APERTA. As of 2021, data will be uploaded to APERTA.
TAGES CEO Leyla Arsan, drew attention to the importance of the need for open data, which is actually in the center of United Nation’s 17 Sustainable Development Goals and continued; “The world has very serious common problems. All countries have started to work on these development goals. Many issues, from climate change to innovation, from education quality to health… In this sense, open data plays a very important role.” She pointed out that data sharing will accelerate new developments in medicine and if the world’s agenda is saving the planet, the only possible way is open data and added; “The whole world should share data openly. Machine learning, which is one of the sub-technologies of artificial intelligence, has improved a lot and it is now technologically possible to access disease data without accessing patient’s personal data. It should only be implemented with regulations. We have made an open platform project for SMEs called OPENISME with the support of European Union Horizon 2020. As a result, we created a tool. This tool is a system that works with artificial intelligence, which works with semantic technologies. It was a tool that provided an opportunity to access scientific data and patent data very quickly. There are many different sources, but hardly anyone knows how to reach them. We need to increase the demand for such search tools.”
Referring to the contribution of open data to sustainability, Leyla Arsan gave Plastic Twist Platform as an example and emphasizes the reuse of plastics; “There are innovations and studies to reuse plastic waste. Open data is very important, especially when it comes to recycling. In fact, an open data standard for the reuse of plastic is now being created. We have created The Plastic Twist Platform. Our aim is to make plastic more valuable by using tokens on top of the blockchain infrastructure where data will be open. It is an awareness and incentive platform for recycling and use of plastic under Blockchain infrastructure. We implement this incentive with tokens. Ensuring that they are more sustainable by giving tokens to each person or institution that recycles, re-uses plastic. Plastic should be more expensive so that you get less demand for production from scratch.” The Plastic Twist Platform produces open data said Leyla Arsan, who also spoke about the working principle of the Plastic Twist Platform: “One of the most important conditions of being open is to create an ecosystem. If this ecosystem doesn’t exist, then open data use is meaningless. Plastic Twist Platform has citizens, innovation hubs, start-ups, entrepreneurs, consumers, industry and public institutions. All these parties that we count in the ecosystem needs to be together.”
Gökhan Kiper, Vice President of IYTE, started to his speech by explaining how the relationship between academics and publishers affect the use of open data. Kiper said that academics around the world are in a more competitive atmosphere because of this form of relationship, and continued; “Unfortunately, this is something that negatively affects our publication quality and culture. As an academic you cannot put your study to your website and share it with the word. Somehow there is a compulsion to the contrary. If you want a progress on your study, you have to share your researches on selected research web sites. On the other hand, the fact that this is done with open access is of course very positive and something we support. However, we have to admit that academics are quite ignorant in this regard. “He emphasized that “perception” is the biggest obstacle in front of open access.
“Open Science Ecosystem Panel” was enriched with questions and comments, where the participants also showed great interest. You can click https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kSJ1J-SeOoI&ab_channel=CreativeCommonsT%C3%BCrkiye to access the live broadcast recording of the panel.
