Use of Open Access Scholarly Communications and Research Productivity of Librarians in Selected Academic Libraries in Southern Nigeria

Patience Uzezi OTOLO, Williams Torubo SAIBAKUMO

Abstract


Open access technology guarantees free, unrestricted access and use of scholarly communications and this has supported research in many ways. This paper tries to find out academic librarians’ use of open access for research productivity. Five research questions and three hypotheses were raised and formulated respectively. Descriptive survey was employed and from six universities libraries and 168 academic librarians were selected through a consensus technique. Results showed very high (82.4%) levels of awareness and positive (79.1%) attitudes among librarians who used open access for variety of purposes, consistency consulting Libre (91%), Academic (85.9%) and Black (80%) routes. Fully published journal articles (96.6%), peer-reviewed post prints (84.62%) and institution repository-archived theses and dissertation (83.2%) were mostly used for research. Based on the frequency of research output using open access, librarians were able to publish one or two papers within three months as against one or two papers yearly using subscription-based journals. There was significant positive relationship between awareness and attitude (r = 0.969, P = 0.000) and attitude and research productivity (r = 0.856, P = 0.000). There was also a significant (χ2 = 105.0, P = 0.000) and notable improvement (49.5% to 71.3%) in research productivity with the use of open access journals in comparison with the subscription-based journal. Open access policy should thus be encouraged based on these findings.


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