Nigerian LIS Academic and Scholarly Publishing Experience: Challenges and the Way Forward

Abstract

The study examined Nigerian Library and Information Science, LIS academics and scholarly publishing experience: challenges and the way forward. A purely qualitative method was adopted using interview as a data collection instrument. The population of study comprised LIS academics from two LIS departments in two universities at the South–south region of Nigeria. Four objectives were developed to guide the study. The results reveal that LIS academics publish mostly for promotion, to improve the knowledge in their chosen discipline, keep themselves abreast of the development in LIS discipline, LIS academics scholarly publication experience range from beginners up to twelve years with publications in various reputable LIS outlets. LIS academics face the challenges of heavy workload, inadequate experience, and lack of knowledge of relevant scholarly publishing outlets, and increasing rate of electronic journals due to advancement in ICT among others. To overcome the challenges, incentives should be provided to motivate LIS academics to engage in scholarly publishing, sponsorship of LIS academics to attend international conference to gain confidence, knowledge and experience on scholarly publishing, allocate money for staff to support their scholarly publishing, a compilation of a unified standard list of journals that should be a guide on where to get published.

Scholarly Publishing Practices among LIS Lecturers in Higher Institutions of Learning in Nigeria

“…Adekoya (2023) argues that Nigerian universities often struggle with insufficient research funding, hindering LIS lecturers' ability to conduct robust research and disseminate their findings through scholarly publications. In furtherance, Obinyan & Tella (2022) reveal Nigerian scholars face challenges in navigating the publishing process, including high publication fees, language barriers, and limited awareness of reputable publishing outlets. In a publish-or-perish academic culture, lecturers prioritize quantity over the quality of their publications, leading to a proliferation of low-impact research outputs (Lund et al, 2023).…”