The usage of electronic journals in Turkish universities and research institutions has increased geometrically since the establishment of ANKOS (Anatolian University Libraries Consortium) in 2001. ANKOS started in 2001 with only a few members having access to nine e-journal collections and bibliographic databases. Over time, the number of licensed databases within the big deal negotiations with published and participating members of the consortium increased rapidly. In 2007, 86 member institutions were accessing 40 electronic journal packages, e-references, bibliographic databases and e-book collections of commercial and society publishers. The success of ANKOS is similar to other consortia around the world. The motivation for the increased usage of electronically available scientific information was influenced in Turkey by the following factors: the universities’ insufficient print collections, the lack of a document delivery system, the establishment of new universities and the rapid increase in scientific publications. Within ANKOS, all contracts with the publishers allow members to join on agreed terms such as in CIBER and NESLI, i.e., ANKOS is an opt-in consortium. Over time, for many universities and research institutions, joining the consortium became the only option. The development of ANKOS was documented by two recent articles (Karasözen and Lindley, 2004; Erdogan and Karasözen, 2006). ANKOS is a member of ICOLC, SELL, COUNTER and SPARC.

There are currently 94 state and 33 foundation or private universities in the Turkish higher education system. Within the last two years, 40 new universities have been founded. A university now exists in every city in Turkey; about 40% of the universities are concentrated in big cities like Istanbul, Ankara and Izmir. The higher education institutions had about 1.7 million students and academic staff in the academic year 2006–2007. The university population consisted of 55% undergraduate, 31% vocational, 9% Master and PhD students, and 5% academic staff. In all licensing negotiations, ANKOS used the number of undergraduate, graduate students and academic staff, excluding the two- or four-year colleges, as FTE numbers, which is about one million. It should be mentioned that the electronic journals were mostly used by graduate students and academic staff. Because education in most of the universities is lecture-based, the undergraduate students use the online scientific resources less than in Europe and the USA. According to the FTE numbers, Turkish universities can be classified into four categories: 15 large universities with more than 20,000 FTE's, 18 medium-sized universities with 5,000–20,000 FTE's, 27 small universities with 2,000–5,000 FTE's and 16 very small universities with less than 2,000 FTE's.

Turkey can be grouped with China, Taiwan, South Korea and Brazil as one of the most dynamic countries in terms of the increase in scientific publications (Glaenzel and Wolfgang, 2008). In 1991, there were about 1,300 publications on the Web of Science ISI database. This number increased to over 16,000 in 2007, which corresponds to an average annual increase rate of about 14%. Similarly, the ratio of research and development expenditure on gross domestic product rose from 0.32% in 1992 to 0.76% in 2006. It should be noted that Turkey is among those countries in which most of the research was carried out in the universities.

Since the establishment of library consortia and the growth of big deals/major contracts, several studies have appeared in recent years in which the usage of e-journals was researched with respect to their cost-effectiveness, user diversity according to research fields, and other relevant factors (see for example Karasözen, Kaygusuz, Özen(Bati), Hacer, 2007; Tonta and Ünal, 2008; Gargiulo, 2003, Bevan, Dalton and Conyers 2005, Boukacem-Zeghmouri and Schöpfel, 2008).

In 2007, the total number of full-text downloads reached about twelve million. In the first years of the consortium, the annual increase rate of full-text downloads and of participating members was about 75–80%, it but slowed to 15–20% in the last few years. These figures are comparable with usage statistics in the French consortium Couperin (Boukacem-Zeghmouri and Schöpfel, 2008) and with the NESLI study (Bevan, Dalton and Conyers, 2005). In 2007, among the 86 ANKOS members, 46 institutions subscribed to 1–10 databases, 28 members to 11–20 databases, and 12 to more than 21 databases.

In 2007, more than 50 universities had access to the major interdisciplinary e-journal collections Science Direct, Springer, Blackwell, Wiley and Taylor & Francis. On average, 20 ANKOS members subscribed to university press and more disciplinary society e-journal packages. The sharpest increase in the number of participating members occurred for Ebrary, where the number of ANKOS members increased from 8 in 2004 to 70 in 2007. This increased demand for e-books is probably due to insufficient and scattered printed book collections in the university libraries and to inefficiencies within the inter-library loan system. Many libraries are currently experimenting with access to other e-book collections.

In Table 1, the full-text downloaded articles of COUNTER compliant e-journal collections within ANKOS are listed. Columns 2–4 give the number of subscribing institutions and the last three columns give the full-text downloads over the years. One observes an increase in usage for the majority of e-journal collections, while JSTOR, Ebsco Publishing, Blackwell Publishing, and Springer are the most dynamic with respect to increase in usage. As in many other consortia, Science Direct is in the lead with about 40% of all ANKOS full-text usage.