Libraries at University of Nebraska-Lincoln
Date of this Version
2022
Abstract
This study investigated the attitude of faculty members towards participation in open access institutional repositories in public universities in North East, Nigeria. Two objectives with corresponding research questions guided the study. Two null hypotheses were formulated and tested at 0.05 level of significance. The descriptive survey design was adopted with a study population of 3,612 faculty members drawn from six (6) public universities in the North-East geopolitical zone. A sample of 316 respondents representing 10% of the entire population was used. A multi-stage purposive simple random sampling technique was adopted. Data for the study was collected using a 30-item structured questionnaire on a four point scale titled “Questionnaire on Attitude of Faculty Members towards Participation in Open Access Institutional Repositories (QAFMPOAIRs)”. Descriptive and inferential statistics of mean scores, and standard deviation were used for data analysis and t-test statistics to test the null hypotheses at .05 level of significance. The findings of the study show that the faculty members perceive OAIRs, to be useful in several ways, including; OAIRs making their research visible, provides an avenue for archiving research outputs, makes information search and retrieval easy. In addition, the perception of faculty members in the state universities on the usefulness of OAIRs is higher than that of their counterparts in the federal universities Findings of the study also revealed different attitudes of faculty members towards participation in OAIRs in public universities, which include, strongly supporting the issue of OAIRs in their institution, often depositing their articles in the OAIRs, and feeling confident in searching information in the OAIRs. The test of hypothesis however, indicated that attitude and participation varies among faculty members in federal and state universities, with faculty members in the federal universities in North-East, Nigeria having a more positive attitude to participation in OAIRs than their colleagues in state owned universities. To this end, the study recommended that the authority and management of public universities in Nigeria should intensify efforts like organizing seminars, workshops and symposiums on the issue of OAIRs with a view to encourage faculty members develop a more positive attitudes towards participation in OAIRs.