Open-Access Initiatives in the Scholarly World and Its Current Status in Pakistan and Its Neighbouring Countries

This study has been designed to explore the leading countries and continents in open access (OA) initiatives regarding OA journals, indexing of journals in Web of Science and Scopus, institutional repositories (IRs), OA policies, and leading universities in OA initiatives worldwide. It compares and analyses the OA initiatives of the leading continents and countries of the world and, importantly, of Pakistan and its neighbouring leading countries in OA initiatives. This study relies on two research methods: a narrative literature review and a survey of the websites. The websites’ survey of the Registry of Open Access Repository, the Directory of Open Access Journals, and the Repository of Open Access Repository Mandates and Policies was also conducted to meet the objectives of the study. It was exposed that the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom, Spain, Poland, Germany, Russia, Turkey, Brazil, South Africa, Australia, Indonesia, Japan, Iran, and so forth have emerged as leading contributors in OA initiatives in terms of OA journals, IRs, and OA policies in their respective continents. The majority of universities of the leading countries in OA initiatives have adopted the Green model of OA to prompt the OA publishing paradigm for a wider readership, more citations, and free access to scholarly literature. In the Pakistani neighbourhood, Iran was leading in OA initiatives, followed by India, China, Pakistan, and so forth. The present study is a comprehensive exploration of the prevalence of OA landscape geographically in leading countries and continents in terms of OA journals, indexing of journals in Web of Science and Scopus, IRs, OA policies, and leading universities in OA initiatives worldwide and with respect to Pakistani neighbouring leading countries. This study may encourage the developing countries, policymakers, higher educational institutions, and universities to adopt the OA initiatives by competing with leading contributors in OA initiatives.