It was not so long ago that I had to search for a medical subject online and, after spending some time, I realized that the references I found were all restricted to the journal subscribers. Then two things came to my mind: 1- How economical it would be to have access to all articles, and 2-How this would attract larger audiences for the authors of those papers. Luckily the introduction of the first open access Journals started a movement of change and now, a few years later, well over a million articles are freely available to readers everywhere (1).

Medicine is an evolving science; every day new drugs become available, new procedures are introduced and new protocols or guidelines are prepared and presented. Providing all medical practitioners, researchers and professionals with access to the latest in medial information remains however a challenge. Publishing in open access journals is a great way to improve this access. Fortunately we see more and more journals move towards open access, improving the availability of medical communication to a wider audience.

As the section editor for medicine at SpringerPlus, I witness a growth of not only submitted manuscripts but also the number of participating institutions and geographic areas. Mid 2013, over a year and a half after launching SpringerPlus, our journal has become a proud venue for over 150 peer-reviewed open access medical articles . In the near future we will continue to develop our journal by improving the speed of peer-review and by updating our publication process to better accommodate the growing number of authors looking to publish high quality peer-reviewed articles open access in SpringerPlus.

Prof. Massoud Mahmoudi, SpringerPlus Section Editor for Medicine

1. http://www.doaj.org/ : 1,175,304 open access articles (26 August 2013)