According to Mehr reporter, publication of scieific articles is one of the main drivers of economic, social and cultural developme in any coury. But this production of science is practically not possible without stable and legal access to reliable global scieific sources. The experience of several decades of higher education in Iran also shows that there has been a direct correlation between the access of universities to iernational scieific bases and the growth of the coury’s scieific production.
Since the end of the 1360s, simultaneously with the moveme of Iranian universities from the educational model (first generation) to research universities (second generation) and then erepreneurial universities in the 1400s, access to scieific resources has always been one of the key infrastructures of this transition.
In this regard, the “Scieific Resources Supply Council” started its official activity in 1379 with the notification of the Research Deputy of the Ministry of Science, Research and Technology.
This council, which has been operating since 2013 under the title of “Scieific Resources Supply Council of the Ministry of Science, Research and Technology”, has been responsible for providing scieific resources to universities with an emphasis on respecting iellectual property, author’s and publisher’s rights (copyright). This council is chaired by the head of Iran Science and Information Technology Research Institute (IranDAC).
However, freque currency jumps and severe budget restrictions caused the legal access of the coury’s universities to many iernational scieific bases to be severely reduced from 2021, and at times even stopped completely. This situation coinued uil 2023; When, with the coinuous follow-up of the head of the Scieific Resources Supply Council in the Program and Budget Organization and the Ceral Bank, the resource supply path was reactivated and universities’ access to iernational scieific bases was resumed.
According to the announceme of the Scieific Resources Supply Council, the most importa measures taken in this period include the settleme of the major part of the outstanding debts of the universities, which were mainly accumulated following the currency fluctuations of 2013, and the beginning of the new period of cooperation with iernational publishers for the years 2024 to 2026; Cooperation that is based on preserving the rights of the publisher and the author.
In this framework, the subscription of widely used scieific and scieometric databases such as ScienceDirect and Scopus has been re-established, and access to artificial ielligence-based databases such as Scopus AI, Zendy AI (ZAIA) and Scinito AI has also been provided to universities. It is also possible to provide “Article Processing Fee” (APC) for the publication of articles by researchers, professors and graduate studes with an iernational publisher.
According to the officials of this council, even in the critical conditions of the coury, including during the 12-day war and subseque eves, efforts have been made to maiain the access of universities to scieific resources by consulting and putting pressure on foreign publishers.
In addition to providing access, the Council for Providing Scieific Resources has held a series of workshops over the past year to improve the skills of using these databases; Including training workshops on working with ScienceDirect database, Scopus citation analysis database, artificial ielligence tools related to these databases, as well as specialized workshops on using Zendy, ZAIA and Scinito AI. Some of these workshops are dedicated to topics such as navigating the global research landscape and accessing the full text of articles.
The educational videos of all these workshops are available to the ierested public through the Irandoc website and on the page of the Scieific Resources Supply Council at irandoc.ac.ir/CSRA.
According to Mehr, providing universities with access to iernational scieific bases is one of the actions of Iran’s Research Institute of Science and Information Technology, which was iroduced on the fifth day of Fajr. On each day of Fajr decade, one of the activities and achievemes of this research institute is iroduced.
