The Roles of Libraries in the World of Open Access as Correlates to the Research Activities of Postgraduate students in four universities in North-Central Nigeria

Abstract

The study was carried out to find out the roles of libraries in the world of open access as correlates to the research activities of postgraduate students in four universities in North-Central Nigeria. The study was anchored on five objectives which are (1) to find out how libraries support open access for research of postgraduate students in North-Central Nigeria; (2) to ascertain the characteristics open access documents for research in the four universities; (3) to find out the format the content of open access appear in libraries to support postgraduate research; (4) to find out how self-archiving has helped postgraduate students in their research activities; (5) to find out how open access mandate has helped the postgraduate students bibliographic visibility towards partial fulfilment of their postgraduate degrees. A sampling fraction of 3.8% was used to select 420 postgraduate students from a population of 11036 purposive sampling technique. A hypothesis would be tested at 0.5 level of significance and data would be presented using frequency tables and percentages. The hypothesis would be analysed using Pearson product moment correlation coefficient to determine the relationship of the compound independent variable to the dependent variable. The findings from the objectives are that the library is an anchor that guides the open access for research among postgraduate students in all the universities. The study also concluded by stating that there is a need for the university authorities to fund the university libraries for robust and not scanty open access, and there must be open access practices for excellent postgraduate research. The study recommended that all the universities in Nigeria and globally should have open access in their libraries for enhanced academic achievement and excellent postgraduate research.