Multilingual Scholarly Journal Publishing in Iran

Despite the dominance of English-language journals in international databases, the global scholarly publishing ecosystem is far more multilingual. This study presents the first comprehensive analysis of Iran's journal publishing landscape, uncovering a complex ecosystem of 3250 active and 639 discontinued journals published in English, Persian and Arabic. Drawing on multi¬ple national databases and journal websites, we examine language, subject area, ownership, publishing platforms, open access models and indexation status. Our findings reveal distinct patterns: Persian-language journals dominate in social sciences and humanities, while English-language journals are concentrated in medical and STEM fields. All journals are locally owned and use domestically developed journal platforms with right-to-left language support. The vast majority (99.2%) are open access. Sanctions have limited access to international infrastructure, prompting local innovations such as the Digital Object Recognizer (DOR), a national alternative to DOI. In contrast to mainstream practice, most Iranian journals pay peer reviewers and use a two-part article processing charge (APC): a non-refundable fee at submission to cover peer review and a second payment upon acceptance. This study shows the scale and specificity of scholarly publishing in a non-Western context and challenges the database-centric view of global publishing by foregrounding local responses to structural constraints.