Libraries at University of Nebraska-Lincoln
Abstract
ABSTRACT
The study was carried out to investigate research visibility of academic librarians in Imo State: factors, strategies, and challenges. The study was guided by 5 research objectives. The researchers adopted descriptive research survey. The population of the study comprised of 155 academic librarians in 9 institutions of higher learning in Imo State. Both online and face to face questionnaire was used as instrument for data collection. Out of 155 copies of questionnaire distributed in both soft and hardcopies, 133 responses were received. The outcome of the study showed that the number of peer reviewed publications, citation for journal publications, journal impact factors, frequency of citation, increased visibility via open access, and journal location are the factors considered by the librarians in choosing where to publish their papers as all the items showed positive means above the criterion mean of 2.50. Again, researchgate, academia, LinkedIn, Mendeley, blog, tweeter and Google scholar are the academic social networking platforms used by the librarians in sharing academic publications. Furthermore, the opportunity for feedback, collaboration, research reputation, job opportunities, promotion and career advancement are the benefits of research visibility to librarians. In the same vein, paper presentation at conferences, collaboration with other authors, public lectures, publishing on widely read journals, maintaining online identity and tracking scholarly impact metrics are the strategies for enhancing research visibility of the librarians. Finally, lack of computer literacy, cost implications of paper publications, lack of awareness of social networking platforms, non-accessibility to other people’s work, inability to track impact metrics, inability to manage online identity as well as lack of registered institutional e-mail were seen as challenges facing research visibility of the librarians. The study concludes that every librarian should strive to be visible, and the researchers recommended that all librarians should identify with all the social networking platforms and publish in widely read journals to track their online identity metrics for easy visibility.