Abstract:
The study was carried out to determine the information and communication technology use for scholarly communication among academics in Nigerian universities, with specific reference to knowledge generation and communication. It also looked at the difficulties faced by academics in generating and communicating knowledge. The study was guided by eight research questions and three hypotheses. Descriptive survey method was used for the study. The population of the study was made up of 3572 academics in arts, education, engineering, science and social science disciplines in ten federal universities having functional information and communication technology in their libraries in the six geopolitical zones of Nigeria. A non-proportionate random sampling technique was used to select six universities, while stratified random sampling technique was used to select respondents. Questionnaire (ICTUSCA) used for data collection was made up of seven sections. The validity and reliability of the instrument were established. The reliability of 0.87 was established for the instrument using Cronbach Alpha procedure. Means and Standard deviation were used to analyze the data while t-test and one-way analysis of variance were used to test the hypotheses at 0.05 level of significance. Tukey HSD for multiple comparisons was used to find out where the difference lay in some of the variables. The results of the study showed that the ICT skills mostly possessed by academics were using GSM, opening of e-mail box without help and using Internet. Academics used Internet and e-mail for scholarly communication, followed by GSM handsets and websites. ICT use was found to encourage the search for information from locations outside the library and facilitate the search for information required for knowledge generation among others. There was significant difference in the use of ICT for scholarly communication by various disciplines. The result of Tukey HSD for multiple comparison showed that academics in the engineering discipline used ICT more than others. There was no significant difference in the mean ratings of male and female academics as regards the use of ICT for scholarly communication. There was also no significant difference in the mean ratings of senior, middle and junior academics in the use of ICT for scholarly communication. It was further revealed that the major difficulties faced by academics in the use of ICT for scholarly communication were lack of basic computing and networking skills, changes in software application and lack of access to scholarship due to publishers’ licensing agreement. Based on the findings, it was recommended that academics should be encouraged to acquire major computing and networking skills, universities should seek for funds to provide consistent Internet connectivity, and government and National Universities Commission should help universities network ICT facilities through Local Area Network (LAN) or Wide Area Network (WAN).
