Citation impact of health and medical journals in Africa: does open accessibility matter?

Purpose The purpose of this study is to examine whether open accessibility of medical journals published in Africa may influence journals’ citation impact. Design/methodology/approach An evaluative informetric research approach was used to compare 134 health and medical (H&M) journals hosted in the African Journals Online (AJOL) database. Harzing’s Publish or Perish (PoP) software was used to extract the following publication and citation data from Google Scholar: citation counts, number of papers and the h-index of the journals. Three null hypotheses were formulated to guide the study. Findings A total of 65 open access (OA) and 69 non-OA H&M journals of African origin were found in AJOL. Only 20 African countries have journals hosted in AJOL, with more than 53% of them from Nigeria and 13.4% from South Africa. Findings reveal that non-OA H&M journals performed poorly in terms of citations compared with their OA counterparts. The t -test analysis revealed high significant difference in the citations and research impacts of OA and non-OA H&M journals published in Africa. Practical implications The study will assist in collection development in medical and health libraries globally and in Africa particularly. The study will also be a useful guide to journal publishers, health researchers and health workers providing information on where to publish and the journals to subscribe. Social implications Apart from adding to the body of knowledge in scholarly communication in Africa, this study will go a long way in influencing policies in H&M research in Africa. Originality/value AJOL is the only online database hosting journals from all countries in Africa. Unfortunately, the quality and research impact of the journals in the database have not been adequately investigated. The paper adopted an informetric approach to evaluate H&M journals in Africa so as to provide wider insight on the contents and quality of the journals hosted in it.