Abstract:
Scholarly Publications Output (SPO) which includes books, journal articles, technical reports and conference proceedings is one of the measures of research productivity of lecturers. However, reports have revealed a decline in the SPO of many lecturers in federal universities in the North-central, Nigeria. Previous studies have focused largely on quantity, level and types of SPO, with little emphasis on the factors that influence lecturers’ SPO. This study, therefore, was carried out to investigate Information Literacy Skills - ILS, Information Security Awareness - ISA and E-resources Use as predictors of lecturers’ SPO in federal universities in the North-central Nigeria.
The Job Performance, Diffusion of Innovation and Protection Motivation theories provided the framework, while descriptive survey design of correlational type was adopted. The seven federal universities in the North-central, Nigeria were enumerated with a population of 5185 lecturers. Stratified random sampling technique was used to select 60.0% of departments in each of the universities (Federal University, Lafia – 13; Federal University, Lokoja, - 7; Federal University of Technology, Minna – 25; University of Abuja – 27; University of Agriculture, Makurdi – 23; University of Ilorin – 71 and University of Jos – 47). The disproportionate stratified random sampling technique was used to select 1065 lecturers (five per department). The instruments used were Information Literacy Skills (α=0.81), Information Security Awareness (α=0.79), E-resources Use (α=0.84) and Scholarly Publications Output (r=0.75) scales. Data were analysed using Descriptive statistics, Pearson product moment correlation and Multiple regression analysis at 0.05 level of significance.
Lecturers’ age was 42.7±10.2 years and 61.3% were male. There was a moderate level of lecturers’ ILS (weighted 2.61) and ISA (2.67) as against the threshold of 2.50. Majority of the lecturers (71.5%) acquired ILS through workshops and seminars. The main purpose of e-resources use was to enrich research work with relevant information from other disciplines (59.3%). Frequently used e-resources were social networking sites (42.7%) and SPO that are regularly published by lecturers are articles in learned journals (68.2%), conference proceedings (60.2%) and occasional papers (67.4%). The ILS (r=0.58), ISA (r=0.17), E-resources Use (r=0.51) had significant relationships with SPO. The ILS, ISA and E-resources Use jointly contributed to SPO (F(3;1017) = 18511.63; Adj. R2=0.981) accounting for 98.0% of its variance. ILS (β=0.83), ISA (β=0.83) and E-resources Use (β=0.71) had significant relative contribution to SPO of lecturers in federal universities in the North-central, Nigeria.
Information literacy skills, information security awareness and e-resources use influenced scholarly publications output of lecturers in federal universities in the North-central, Nigeria. Lecturers should give adequate attention to these factors to increase their scholarly publications output
