Enhancing Faculty Research Visibility in the Era of Open Science in Universities In Nigeria: The Role of Digital Scholarly Communication Platforms

Abstract

This study examined the use of digital scholarly communication platforms (DSCP) by faculty in federal universities in Nigeria. The survey design was descriptive, and the study population comprised all faculty in federal universities in Nigeria. The census sampling technique was adopted, and the online questionnaire was used for data collection. The online questionnaire was administered to faculty through professional networks such as LinkedIn and WhatsApp platforms, and 917 completed it, which formed the basis for the analysis. Findings revealed that Nigerian university faculty predominantly use Google Scholar Profiles and ResearchGate for promoting their research, reflecting a strong preference for platforms that provide citation tracking, visibility, and academic networking opportunities. Faculty placed high value on DSCP for enhancing research visibility. The findings also revealed that DSCP facilitates collaborative research that contributes to faculty research visibility by enabling co-authorship opportunities, fostering connections with researchers in similar fields, supporting regular scholarly interactions, improving the visibility of faculty research outputs, and helping to identify potential research collaborators. However, barriers such as inadequate institutional support or training, concerns about data privacy and research misuse, low digital literacy, time constraints, and the challenge of managing multiple profiles hinder Nigerian university faculty from effectively using DSCP. The hypothesis test showed a strong positive statistically significant relationship between research visibility and research collaboration among faculty. The authors recommended that university libraries should prioritize targeted training on ASNPs and digital literacy skills for faculty, promote awareness of ORCID, and provide structured support for the effective use of DSCP.