Use of Open Access Publications and Lecturers Research Productivity in Polytechnics in South-South Nigeria

The rationale behind this study is to find out the availability of materials that are in open access, and to see if the available open access publications enough to enhance lecturers’ productivity in polytechnics in South-South, Nigeria. In accomplishing this, three research questions and one hypothesis guided the study. A sample of 291 lecturers was propositionally drawn from the population of 1,140 lecturers in South-South, Nigeria. Frequency counts was used to analyze the respondents’ bio data and research questions 1-4, while the inferential statistics that was used for the testing of research hypothesis is Pearson Product moment correlation coefficient. From the data collected lecturers make very high use of electronic journals, library print journals, PDFs, and Wiki articles. The result of the analyzed data shows that open access resources improves lecturers’ productivity in lecturing, online publishing, offline publishing, publishing locally, publishing internationally, and publishing scholarly research papers (peer reviewed). Also, it shows that the lecturers have a very high skill in Internet surfing, word processing packages, use of electronic databases, Windows interface, search engines use, browsers use, downloading, uploading, and PDF resources. However, they lacked skill in use of Spreadsheet packages thus posing a challenge to their data analysis skills. Among other, it shows that the benefits accruing from lecturers’ productivity includes: impartation of knowledge on students, impartation of knowledge on researchers, contribution to existing knowledge, updating knowledge, increasing the academic standard of institutions, creation of new knowledge, provision of research materials, provision of research papers in open access databases, improvement of students’ reading culture, and filling gaps in knowledge. Moreover, study reveals that network problems, poor electricity supply constitute technological hindrances to lecturers’ access to open access resources. Furthermore, findings revealed that there is no significant relationship between the use of Open Access (OA) publications and lecturers’ productivity in polytechnics in SouthSouth, Nigeria. The findings further conclude that there is a significant relationship between lecturers’ levels of ICTs skills for use of open access (OA) and their productivity in polytechnics in South-South, Nigeria.