Research data services and librarian competencies in emerging research ecosystems: A mixed methods study from Turkish university libraries

Research data services (RDS) in emerging research ecosystems remain fragmented despite a decade of policy. Recent evidence establishes the cause as structural rather than a skills deficit; the question here is what kind of structure is missing. Reading the Turkish case through Abbott's Theory of Professions, this mixed methods study argues that the FAIR principles distribute four necessary conditions across units whose boundaries predate the mandate, designating no party responsible for holding them together. Competency data from 83 librarians at universities with an institutional open access or open science policy and interviews with 10 administrators were integrated through aggregate-level joint display. Advisory competency far exceeded technical competency ( M = 3.61 against 2.76; d z = 1.52), and a critical divergence emerged: high readiness to advise on dataset citation coincided with an absent service, while data management planning was conceded to research-funding units. The study proposes a coordination jurisdiction as the settlement whose absence produces this pattern.