Zehra Taşkın is Associate Professor at Hacettepe University, Department of Information Management, and affiliated with the Institute of Informatics, Department of Information Studies. She is also a researcher at our Scholarly Communication Research Group, where she previously worked as a postdoctoral researcher between 2019 and 2021. Within the group, she is affectionately known as the “master of rainbows,” reflecting her enthusiasm for data visualisation and her tendency to incorporate visual approaches into her research.

Her research focuses on scholarly communication, research evaluation, open science, and inequalities in academia. She is particularly interested in how evaluation systems shape academic behaviour, publishing practices, and knowledge production, and she advocates for research assessment approaches that prioritise scientific and societal contributions over purely quantitative metrics.

She currently coordinates OPENRAM, a €1.7 million Marie Skłodowska-Curie Staff Exchanges (MSCA-SE) project funded by the European Commission. The project brings together partners from Europe, Latin America, and Africa to develop more inclusive, transparent, and context-sensitive approaches to research evaluation. She is also involved in international initiatives such as the DIAMAS and ALMASI projects, which aim to strengthen non-profit and institutionally driven open-access publishing models.

Her academic work builds on a long-standing interest in bibliometrics and research evaluation, shaped by both professional and academic experience. Her doctoral research examined the structural and conceptual limitations of citation-based indicators, and her subsequent postdoctoral research further explored citation infrastructures, openness, and sustainability. Her research combines bibliometric analysis, policy studies, and qualitative approaches to better understand the structural conditions influencing academic work.

She is also actively engaged in science communication and public engagement. She writes and speaks regularly on research evaluation, academic culture, and open science, and maintains an academic blog where she reflects on scholarly communication and inequalities in academia. In 2024, she received the Outstanding Young Scientist Award from the Science Academy, an independent organization promoting scientific merit, freedom, and integrity.

Her work aims to contribute to more equitable, transparent, and responsible research systems.

https://www.zehrataskin.com/

Selected publications