Investigation of barriers against providing open access to Iranian Scholarly journals: publisher's point of view

This article aimed to investigate the barriers regarding the provision of open access to Iranian scholarly journals from their publisher's perspective. To that end 250 publishers categorizing in different subject fields were selected using a random sampling method. Data were collected through questionnaire. Analysis of 104 completed questionnaires showed that there is significant difference among publishers in different subject areas (Humanities, Engineering, Pure, Medical and Agriculture sciences) towards the priority of financial, infrastructural and cultural issues. But there was no significant difference between that of capital-based and non-capital based publishers as well as between academic and non-academic publishers. Results also indicated that financial, infrastructural and cultural barriers have not had the same impact as deterrent factor. Publishers highlighted some propositions to improve open access to Iranian scholarly journal such as: financial support by the mother organization, third party supports, government support and so on.