Tehran University Loses Access To Scientific Databases Due To $1.2mn Debt

The University of Tehran, the oldest and possibly most prominent Iranian university, has lost its access to databases of scientific articles due to financial problems.

Mehdi Fakour, vice chancellor of research at the university, said Thursday: "Due to the increase in the exchange rate of the dollar in recent months, the total debts of Tehran University have reached 60 billion tomans (600 billion rials or about $1.2 million) since 2018."

He added that subscription fees for several databases in social and behavioral sciences have been paid but the university has not paid its debt to major medical and engineering databases Elsevier and Springer, among the top publishers of peer-reviewed journals in science, humanities and medical fields. 

This is not the first time that Iranian universities report such issues. Most Iranian university students suffer months of no access with several short bouts during which they download large numbers of articles and journals to study later. 

Earlier in the year, an official of the Iranian Ministry of Science said that a large number of the country's universities have been cut off from access to the world's scientific databases due to the “debts of the universities," noting that sometimes it is impossible to pay the fees because of "sanctions". 

Abdossadeh Neisy added that according to the law, contracts between scientific bases and universities are signed in dollars. "Since university budgets in Iran are paid in rials, universities cannot provide the needed budgets,” he said.