Impact of Information Literacy Skills on Academic Staff Research Productivity in Nigerian Federal Universities

Abstract

The study examined the influence of information literacy skills on academics research productivity in federal universities in Nigeria. The study adopted the descriptive survey research design. Multistage sampling technique was used to select one thousand one hundred and fifty-seven (1,057) academic staff members from federal universities in the six geo-political zones of Nigeria.  The instruments used for data collection were: Information Literacy Skills Acquisition Scale (?= 0.83), Information Literacy Skills Scale (?= 0.92) and Research Productivity of Academic Scale (?=0.91). Eight hundred and seventy-three (873) copies of questionnaire were completed, returned and used in the study which represent (83%) response rate. Three research questions were answered and data were analysed using descriptive statistics. The result shows that the academic staff acquires information literacy skill mostly through attending workshops/seminars, self-taught, assistance from other colleagues, trial and error, guidance from library staff and faculty/departmental training. Also, the analysis establishes the fact that the research productivity of the academic staff in Nigerian federal universities is higher in journal publications, technical reports, conference papers, working papers and occasional papers. However, the research productivity of the academic staff in Nigerian federal universities is lower in textbook publications, monographs, patents and certified inventions. The finding, however, shows that the mean scores of each of the seven components tested under the information literacy skills is higher than the mid-point scores of 2.5 on a scale of five. Therefore academics in Nigerian federal universities possessed high information literacy skills based on the overall mean scores.   Information literacy is considered an important element in educational and professional settings in particular, the academic environment. The result of this research study has raised some implications for implementation of information literacy skills programmes to improve quality and quantity of academics research productivity in Nigerian universities.

Keywords: Research productivity, Academic staff, Information literacy skills, Nigeria.