TR Dizin — National Index Search & Journal-Status Check

Searches TR Dizin (TÜBİTAK ULAKBİM's ulusal atıf dizini — the national citation index) and answers the question Turkish academics actually ask: "Is this journal indexed in TR Dizin right now?" It hits the index's confirmed keyless API, parses the Elasticsearch records, and for a journal derives a current-status verdict from the authoritative coverage fields.

TR Dizin status is a career gate: it gates doçentlik (associate-professorship) eligibility and feeds akademik teşvik (academic-incentive) / UBYT payouts. This skill verifies status; it does not compute the points — see the routing table below.

Quick Start

Is the journal "Bilig" indexed in TR Dizin?
"Toplum ve Bilim" TR Dizin'de taranıyor mu?
Find TR Dizin publications about deprem okuryazarlığı, newest first
Search TR Dizin for an author / institution

→ Run scripts/query_trdizin.py, read the JSON/table, and report the verdict. Never assert a journal's status from memory — always query the live index.

When to Use This Skill

Use it for any of these intents:

• Check journal status — "is journal X TR Dizin indexed?", "TR Dizin'de var mı?",

verify a target venue's national-index status before submitting.

• Search publications — find Turkish-indexed articles by keyword, sort by year

or citation count, narrow with the returned year/subject/language facets.

• Search author / institution — locate an author or institution record in the

national index.

• Audit a venue list — screen a set of journals for current TR Dizin coverage

(e.g. before assembling a doçentlik dossier — but the point math is elsewhere).

Does NOT Trigger — route these to the right sibling

This skill answers "is it in the index, and what does the index say?" — it does not adjudicate acceptance criteria, compute career points, or format citations.

How It Works

The TR Dizin SPA is backed by an unauthenticated Elasticsearch search API (verified live 2026-06-06, HTTP 200). One endpoint, four record types:

GET https://search.trdizin.gov.tr/api/defaultSearch/{type}/?q=…&order=…&page=…
    type ∈ { publication | journal | author | institution }

Full endpoint, parameter, and _source field documentation is in references/api_reference.md. The journal-status logic is in references/journal_status.md.

Two facts to keep honest:

• No `limit` param. The server returns ~10 hits per page and ignores

a client limit. To collect N records, page through page=1,2,… and slice client-side — which is exactly what the script's --limit does. Do not tell the user a server-side limit exists.

• `firstIndexDate` / `indexDate` are query-time stamps (they come back as

"now") and carry no index history. Status is derived from isActive, journalYear coverage, and rejectYearList only.

• `isActive` is not trustworthy on its own. A journal can keep

isActive=true while coverage stopped years ago and recent years are in rejectYearList (verified: Eğitim Bilim Toplum, ISSN 1303-9202 — active, coverage→2019, rejected 2020–2025). The script therefore checks rejectYearList against the latest coverage year before ever saying "currently indexed".

Pipeline

1. Pick the mode

2. Run the query

# Journal status (the headline use case)
uv run python skills/turkish-academia/alterlab-trdizin/scripts/query_trdizin.py \
    journal "Bilig" --limit 3

# Publication search, newest first, with facets, JSON out
uv run python skills/turkish-academia/alterlab-trdizin/scripts/query_trdizin.py \
    publication "deprem okuryazarlığı" \
    --order publicationYear-DESC --limit 20 --facets --out trdizin.json

• --order (verified enum): relevance-DESC (default), publicationYear-ASC|DESC,

title-ASC|DESC, orderCitationCount-ASC|DESC.

• --limit N collects up to N records by paging client-side (default 10).
• --facets adds the year / subject / language aggregations.
• --json / --out PATH emit the structured report; default is a readable table.
• The script prefers requests, falls back to stdlib urllib — runs in a bare

uv env with no API key.

3. Report the verdict

For a journal, surface the derived verdict, e.g.:

• Currently indexed in TR Dizin (active; coverage years 2004–2026) — when

isActive is true, journalYear shows recent coverage, and there is no reject year newer than the last covered year.

• No longer indexed in TR Dizin — rejected after coverage (…) — when the most

recent rejectYearList year is newer than the last journalYear year. This fires even if `isActive` is still true (de-indexed venue).

• Rejected / not indexed (rejected years …) — when rejectYearList is set but

not newer than coverage.

• Not currently active in TR Dizin — when isActive is false.

Quote ISSN/eISSN and the coverage years so the user can confirm it is the right journal (title collisions happen). If it matters for a submission decision, remind them TR Dizin status can change between terms — re-check before relying on it.

For publications, present a table of (year) title — journal · doi · access, sorted as requested, and offer to refine via the facets.

Self-Check Before Reporting

• Did the API actually respond? If the script exited with NETWORK UNAVAILABLE

(exit 3), say so plainly and do not state a status from memory.

• Is the matched journal the right one? Confirm by ISSN/eISSN, not title alone.
• Did the verdict come from isActive / journalYear / rejectYearList — not

from the query-time *IndexDate fields?

• Is this a status question? If the user actually wants doçentlik points, teşvik

scoring, DergiPark hosting, tez search, or citation formatting, hand off to the sibling skill named in the routing table above.

References

• references/api_reference.md — endpoint,

parameters, order enum, response shape, _source fields per type, facets, and the no-limit / query-time-date caveats (all verified live).

• references/journal_status.md — the

indexing-status decision logic, worked examples, and why it gates doçentlik / teşvik (with hand-offs to those skills).

Part of the AlterLab Academic Skills suite.