Perceptions of the Pakistani editors for open access journal publishing: a developing country's perspective

Objectives This study has been designed to determine Pakistani editors' perceptions regarding the Open Access (OA) publishing practices of the Higher Education Commission (HEC)-recognized journals in Pakistan, and to assess their best OA publishing models.Methodology A structured questionnaire-based survey method of quantitative research approach was adopted to achieve the study's objectives by collecting data from the editors of all 329 HEC-recognized journals in Pakistan.Findings This study exposed that public and teaching institutes are leading in OA journal publishing in Pakistan as compared to private and research institutes. Diamond OA, and Gold OA publishing models are popular among the respondents; however, respondents are not convinced to follow any specific OA publishing model due to their different choices. A large majority (92%) of the journals belong to the Y category (the lowest) of journals. A large majority (72%) of the journals in Pakistan is adopting the Open Journal System (OJS), and parent institutions installed web browsers. CC-BY-NC and CC-BY licenses are their favorite licenses.Significance The present study is the first comprehensive study on editors' perceptions for OA journal publishing and is an effort to fill this gap to invigorate the scholarly literature. This study may enable the journals, editors, and publishers to follow the best OA journal publishing practices of the Pakistani journals for global OA usage of scholarly journals. The results have practical and theoretical ramifications for academic and research institutions, federal and provincial higher education commissioners, policy organizations, and parent institutions of journals.