Nigerian University Academics and Institutional repository: A case study of University of Jos, faculty of Natural Sciences lecturers

Abstract

This research was designed to evaluate the Lecturers of University of Jos knowledge on Institutional Repository, awareness of existence of University of Jos Institutional Repository, willingness to submit personal research works to the Institutional Repository and challenges faced, using the lecturers of Faculty of Natural Sciences as a focal population. The entire population of 148 academic staff members in the faculty was adopted for the research. Descriptive survey was the research design used for the study. The instruments used for data collection were questionnaire and interview. Descriptive statistics such as frequency counts, percentages and cross- tabulations were used to analyze the data generated. The findings of the research revealed among others that the majority of the lecturers did not have any idea of what Open Access Institutional Repository means and also not aware of the existence of the University of Jos Institutional Repository. Nevertheless, most of the lecturers appeared undecided on willingness to submit personal research works to the university’s Institutional Repository. Hence, most of the lecturers indicated unawareness of the existence the university’s Institutional Repository as their major reason for not participating in the development of the Institutional Repository. It was therefore, recommended among others that the University’s Management through the Directorate of ICT unit in association with the University’s Library should continue to organize conferences, capacity building workshops and seminars to educate the lecturers on the relevance of Institutional Repository to the academic community. In this way, their knowledge on Open Access Institutional Repository will be enriched and they will then be willing to contribute to the development of institutional repository in the university.