Electronic resources and academic research: A survey of research publications in Private University in Nigeria

Abstract

This work examined the level of usage of electronic information resources by faculty staff of a  private university in their publications. The study employed a descriptive survey method. The population of the study was made up of academic staff in the private university under study who utilize e-resources in their research publications. The selection of the population sample of the institution was done randomly. The choice of the categories of staff is justified by the fact that only university lecturers do online publications mostly. A total number of twelve (12) journal titles were surveyed. Seven (7) of journal titles were from humanities, three (3) were from the social sciences, one (1) from education and lastly one (1) from management sciences. The data was gathered from references in articles published in the journals. Structured questionnaire was used for the collection of data from sample size from one (1) private university in FCT, Abuja. The data collected were analyzed using frequency count and simple percentages The study revealed that majority of the contributors made use of the traditional print materials rather than online resources from the Internet. Other information which the study also exposed was on the currency of the materials used. The resources were grouped between those which were published before 2009 and those published after 2009. The materials whose date of publication was after 2009 were found to be fewer in number than those published before 2009. This is against the backdrop of having millions of information materials online with more recent dates of publication. Suggestions were that staff of private university should embrace the use of electronic resources as these offer wider and more detailed information. Based on the findings of this study, it is recommended that more emphasis should be laid on the acquisition of electronic resources so as to give room for wider and multiple access to information resources in order to meet the information needs of diverse users.