TR Dizin (also written TR Index) is Turkey’s national academic citation index and publication database, covering journals across the sciences, social sciences, and humanities that meet its editorial and peer-review evaluation criteria. It is developed and operated by ULAKBİM — the Turkish Academic Network and Information Center (Ulusal Akademik Ağ ve Bilgi Merkezi) — a research institute of TÜBİTAK, the Scientific and Technological Research Council of Turkey. For researchers, editors, and research administrators working with Turkish institutions, TR Dizin functions as a national-level counterpart to international citation databases such as Web of Science and Scopus — it indexes journal content, tracks bibliographic and citation metadata, and, notably, feeds into Turkish academic promotion and institutional evaluation processes in ways those international indexes do not.
Not to be confused with: TR Dizin is unrelated to TİTCK (the Turkish Medicines and Medical Devices Agency), which is the country’s clinical-trial and drug-approval regulator. TR Dizin is a bibliographic/citation index for scholarly journals; TİTCK is a health-products regulatory authority. The two share no operational connection beyond both being Turkish national bodies relevant to research administration.
What TR Dizin Is and Who Operates It
ULAKBİM was established as TÜBİTAK’s center for national academic networking and scholarly information infrastructure. Alongside TR Dizin, ULAKBİM operates other national scholarly-communication services for Turkish academia, but TR Dizin is its flagship citation index: a database of Turkish (and some international) journals that have applied for and passed a structured evaluation process, indexed with bibliographic metadata (titles, authors, abstracts, keywords) and, where publisher licensing agreements permit, full text.
According to ULAKBİM/TR Dizin’s own published history, the index has been accessible online since August 2000. It originally operated under the name National Databases (Ulusal Veri Tabanları / UVT) before being rebranded as TR Dizin in 2013. The rebranding reflected a broader shift toward aligning the index’s structure and evaluation practices with international bibliographic-database norms.
Subject Scope and Coverage
TR Dizin organizes indexed journals under two main fields — Science and Social Sciences — with subfields spanning Dentistry, Pharmacy, Engineering, Basic Sciences, Health Sciences, Veterinary Medicine, and Social Sciences and Humanities. Coverage is concentrated in Turkish-language and Turkey-published journals, though the index also includes journals publishing in English or bilingually, reflecting a requirement (discussed below) that indexed articles carry both Turkish and English titles, keywords, and abstracts.
CASRAI does not independently verify or publish exact journal or record counts for TR Dizin, since these figures change as journals are added, re-evaluated, or removed; check trdizin.gov.tr directly for current figures rather than relying on a cited number that may be out of date.
How a Journal Gets Included: Application and Evaluation
Journal inclusion in TR Dizin is not automatic. A journal must apply and meet prerequisite conditions before it is evaluated by TR Index experts and a dedicated evaluation committee, generally after a follow-up period of about one year of regular publication. Criteria published by ULAKBİM/TR Dizin cover several areas:
- Editorial standards: the qualifications and publication record of the editor and editorial board are taken into account.
- Peer review: reviewers should be drawn from a diversity of institutions, with attention to impartiality; peer-review evaluation reports must be retained for at least five years after publication.
- Bilingual metadata: articles must carry Turkish and English titles, keywords, and abstracts.
- Author/institutional diversity: the index committee considers whether authors and their institutional affiliations are sufficiently varied across issues, rather than concentrated in one editorial circle.
- Research ethics: ethics committee approval is required for human- and animal-subject research, including in the social sciences, consistent with the kind of documentation expected under broader research integrity norms.
These criteria are published and periodically updated by ULAKBİM; researchers or editors evaluating a specific journal’s status should check the current criteria directly on trdizin.gov.tr rather than relying on a static summary, since ULAKBİM has revised the criteria more than once.
Periodic Re-Evaluation and Delisting
Inclusion in TR Dizin is not permanent. Indexed journals are periodically re-evaluated by the TÜBİTAK ULAKBİM TR Dizin committee, and a journal can be removed from the index if it no longer meets the evaluation criteria or other stated conditions — for example, lapses in peer-review rigor, editorial-board turnover that isn’t disclosed, or failure to maintain bilingual metadata standards. This periodic re-review is analogous in function, though not in governance or methodology, to how Web of Science delists journals that fall short of its Core Collection standards, or how DOAJ removes journals that stop meeting its transparency criteria.
TR Dizin’s Role in Turkish Academic Promotion and Evaluation
Beyond functioning as a discovery and citation tool, TR Dizin plays a distinctive role that most international citation indexes do not: it is one of the recognized index sources referenced in Turkish academic promotion and evaluation processes. Publication in a TR Dizin-indexed journal is commonly cited, alongside publication in international indexes such as SCI/SCIE, SSCI, AHCI, Scopus, or Web of Science, as one of the forms of evidence Turkish universities and the national Higher Education Council (YÖK) and its Interuniversity Board (ÜAK) consider in associate professorship and academic-title evaluation criteria. The specific weighting — how many TR Dizin publications count relative to internationally indexed ones, and whether a TR Dizin publication is treated as sufficient on its own — varies by university, faculty, and discipline, and by the criteria in force in a given evaluation cycle. Research administrators supporting Turkish faculty through promotion or tenure processes should confirm the current criteria with the relevant university’s academic affairs office or YÖK/ÜAK directly, rather than assume a fixed national standard, since these criteria are revised periodically.
TR Dizin Compared to International Citation Databases
TR Dizin serves a similar structural role to Web of Science or Scopus — a curated, criteria-based index of journals with bibliographic and citation metadata — but differs in scope and purpose:
- Coverage: TR Dizin is national in scope, concentrated on Turkish-published and Turkish-language scholarship; Web of Science and Scopus are international, multidisciplinary, and much larger in journal count.
- Access model: TR Dizin is a publicly accessible government-operated service; Web of Science and Scopus are commercial, subscription-based products.
- Institutional function: TR Dizin inclusion carries specific weight in Turkish national academic promotion criteria in a way that is particular to Turkey’s higher-education governance; Web of Science/Scopus indexing is used globally for institutional rankings, grant track-record evidence, and bibliometric research assessment.
- Evaluation criteria: TR Dizin’s committee-based evaluation emphasizes bilingual metadata and Turkish research-ethics documentation requirements specific to the national context, alongside standard peer-review and editorial-quality checks.
The two are not mutually exclusive — a Turkish journal may be indexed in TR Dizin, in Web of Science, in Scopus, in DOAJ, or in several simultaneously, since each index applies its own independent evaluation.
Where TR Dizin Fits in Research Information Infrastructure
For research administrators mapping national research-information systems more broadly, TR Dizin sits alongside a wider set of persistent-identifier and CRIS-adjacent infrastructure that a researcher or institution working with Turkey may encounter — including standard identifier systems like ORCID for individual researchers, ISSN registration for journal-level identification, and Crossref DOIs for individual articles. TR Dizin itself functions primarily as a national bibliographic/citation index rather than a full CRIS platform; it does not replace institution-level research information management systems, but it is frequently one of the data sources those systems, and Turkish faculty CVs and promotion dossiers, need to reference.
Frequently Asked Questions
Is TR Dizin the same as ULAKBİM?
No. ULAKBİM is the organization — a TÜBİTAK research institute — that develops and operates TR Dizin. TR Dizin is the index/database product itself. You will see both names used together (“TÜBİTAK ULAKBİM TR Dizin”) in official communications because the operating body and the product are closely identified with each other.
Is TR Dizin the same as TİTCK?
No, and this is a common point of confusion given both are Turkish national bodies relevant to research. TR Dizin/ULAKBİM is a bibliographic citation index for scholarly journals, run by TÜBİTAK. TİTCK is Turkey’s medicines and medical devices regulatory authority, responsible for clinical trial approvals. They serve entirely different functions and sit under different parts of Turkey’s public administration.
Does publishing in a TR Dizin-indexed journal count toward international citation metrics?
Not automatically. TR Dizin citation counts and index status are specific to TR Dizin’s own database. A journal’s TR Dizin status does not by itself determine whether it is also indexed in Web of Science, Scopus, or another international database — each applies independent evaluation criteria, and a journal may hold some combination of these indexing statuses at once.
How does a journal apply for TR Dizin inclusion?
Applications and current prerequisite conditions are published directly by ULAKBİM/TR Dizin. Because criteria and application procedures are revised periodically, editors should consult the current requirements on trdizin.gov.tr rather than relying on a secondary summary.
Does TR Dizin indexing affect academic promotion in Turkey?
It can. TR Dizin-indexed publication is one recognized form of evidence in Turkish university and YÖK/ÜAK academic-title evaluation processes, generally considered alongside (not as a full substitute for) publication in international indexes, though exact requirements vary by university, faculty, and evaluation cycle.
