Status of digital standards, licensing types, and archiving policies in Asian open access journals registered in Directory of Open Access Journals

Purpose: This study aims to analyze the digital standards of Asian journals registered in the Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ) which has been recognized as an index of quality for open access journals. Methods: Data including 54 fields of each journal listed in DOAJ were provided by the DOAJ team in June 5, 2018. We focused on 11 fields including digital standards, content licensing types and digital archiving policy. Results: Based on raw data from DOAJ from June 5, 2018, there are 11,534 journals registered in the directory. Among all journals in the directory, Asian journals comprise 1,972 journals from 18 countries. Indonesian journals rank at the top for Asian journals, with 1,322 journals originating from that country. Other major Asian countries' registration status includes India (238), South Korea (82), China (80), Malaysia (45), Pakistan (39), Taiwan (30), Thailand (27), Japan (20), and Hong Kong (20). Eighty percent of journals (1,584) are using PDF-only as their full-text format, and DOI is adopted in 852 journals (43%). Almost 98% of journals (1,936) are having a Creative Commons license; however, 85% of journals (1,689) do not have a digital archiving policy. Conclusion: Generally, digital standards are well implemented in South Korea, and digital archiving/deposit policy is well accepted in Indian journals. Many Asian open access journal editors can refer to this study result when they digitalize their journals in order to meet global standards.