The impact of the open access movement on medical based scholarly publishing in Nigeria

The open access movement and its initiatives -- which advocate a shift from predominant print-based publication to electronic and Internet sources -- is expected to improve the global distribution of scholarly research and impact positively on the current state of scholarly publications in the developing world. This review examines the current state of medical journals in Nigeria and assesses the impact of the open access movement and its initiatives on medical scholarly publishing in Nigeria. The resulting appraisal shows that open access initiatives have impacted positively on medical scholarly publishing in Nigeria, with the African Journals Online and the African Index Medicus projects being the most significant influences. There are enormous prospects for further developing medical scholarly publishing in Nigeria using open access initiatives; these opportunities should be exploited and developed