Journal of Research in Peace, Gender and Development (ISSN: 2251-0036) Vol. 2(8) pp. 171-175, August 2012
Available online@ http://www.interesjournals.org/JRPGD
Copyright ©2012 International Research Journals
Full Length Research Paper
Publication culture and effective University
management in Bayelsa and Rivers State, Nigeria
F. N. Anijaobi-Idem,*1 I. U. Berezi 2, B. A. Akuegwu 3
1
Department of Educational Administration and Planning University of Calabar, Calabar Nigeria
2
Department of Curriculum and Instruction Niger Delta University, Bayelsa State, Nigeria
Abstract
This expose factor is a designed study to explore the influence of publication culture on effective
University management in old Rivers State of Nigeria. One hypothesis was formulated to direct the
investigation. Academic staff population of 3487 in 4 universities was used in which 1047 of them was
drawn using stratified random sampling technique to constitute the sample. The collection of data was
carried out using researchers’-constructed instrument called “Publication culture and effective
university management questionnaire (PCEUMQ)”, which was validated and used for this study. Data
obtained were statiscally treated using descriptive statistics and One Way Analysis of Variance
(ANOVA). Results revealed that publication culture has no significant influence on effective university
management in terms of goal attainment, facilities management, staff management and student’s
management. It was concluded that publication culture has nothing to do with effective university
management in Old Rivers State of Nigeria. From this, a number of recommendations were made.
Keywords: Publication culture, university management, goal attainment, facilities management, staff
management, students’ management.
INTRODUCTION
The importance of research and publication to the
effectiveness of the university system as well as its
achievement is strongly recognized by most universities
throughout the world. It is a well known fact that higher
education institutions have as their main functions,
teaching, research and community service. Closely
related to the research function is publication as
researches are expected to be widely circulated for public
consumption.
Publication refers to the quality and
quantity of research produced by academic staff. This is
evident in the number of published researches in local
and international journals, awards obtained by staff and
patents, among others (Salazar- Clemena and AlmonteAcosta, 2008).
There is no doubt that concluded research studies
without their publication is of no use to anyone and
cannot contribute to development. It is also common
knowledge that the primary objective of creating and
*Corresponding Author E-mail: francaanijah@yahoo.com
disseminating knowledge can be achieved through
research publication. Indeed, one of the major criteria for
academic staff assessment/promotion is the number of
publications. This goes to show the enormous importance
accorded to research and publication in the university
system. As a result of this ‘publish or perish’ culture,
some academic staff in Nigerian universities spends
more time on research activities than teaching. This is
contrary to the observation of Sanyal and Varghese
(2006) that universities in the developed world have a
firm tradition of research while universities in the
developing world have retained strong teaching functions
and weak research functions.
One of the greatest challenges facing African
universities (and particularly Nigeria) is its abysmally low
scores on all indices of sustainable human development
posed by the low global ranking of its universities.
Unfortunately, none of the Nigerian universities made the
top 2000 in the world. None of them is even in the top 30
Africa (Obanya, 2010). Universities are ranked based on
six objective indicators as listed below.
1.
The number of alumni and staff winning the
Nobel prize and medals in specific fields
172 J. Res. Peace Gend. Dev.
2.
Number of highly cited researchers
3.
Number of articles published in Nature and Science
4.
Number of articles indexed in science citation index
5.
Number of articles in social science index
6.
Per capita performance in reference to the size of
the institution (Obanya, 2010).
From the above, it could be seen that four out of the
six indicators have to do with publication, confirming the
centrality of publication in the university management
system. However, concerns over the low ranking of
Nigerian universities – Webiometric Ranking- 2010,
Nigerian institutions on the African Universities League
Table (4ic web Ranking): 2010 and the Estimation of
Nigerian Universities Score Card on University World
Standard Features indicated the far-from-world-status
level of a large number of universities in Nigeria.
Given this, scenario, the Federal Government of
Nigeria through the National Universities Commission
(NUC) the regulatory body of universities in Nigeria, has
mandated its universities to introduce certain
interventions, to enhance the nation’s global
competiveness. One area of intervention is in the criteria
for appointments and promotions of university academic
staff. The rate at which some Nigerian universities are
churning out professors is quite alarming and to some
extent disturbing. Consequently, some universities are
reviewing their criteria for promotion especially the
professorial cadres. These universities which include the
South-South Universities insist that some of the
publications must be original publications in reputable
foreign journals.
Literature review
Wang (2002) conducted a study to measure the impact of
publication on the effectiveness of the university system,
his aim was to identify the robustness of rankings to the
choice of method, as well as to highlight differences in
focus of departments’ research output. A striking feature
of the measures was that the majority of economists in
Australian university departments had done no research
that had been published in a fairly long list of refereed
journals over the last dozen years. They had published in
other outlets resulting in their works rarely cited. Thus,
average research output was low.
Kayaklingonza (2009) in his own study to investigate
academic output of lecturers and the effectiveness of the
university system in five universities in Kenya, six
research hypotheses were formulated of which one was
to investigate the relationship between publication by
academic lecturers and the effectiveness of the university
system. Result of this finding revealed that there exist a
significant relationship between publication by academic
staff and the effectiveness of the university system.
According to him, publication is the only way in which
academic staff could showcase what they have acquired
through research and experience. Consequently, all
universities in Kenya have made it compulsory that
academic staff in universities must publish in recognized
journals. Similarly, a study by Irtwange and Orsaah
(2009), on the performance indicators of academic staff,
revealed that among the several performance indicators,
publication by the academic lecturers seemed to be the
most prominent as all as academic
lecturers are
compelled to publish as a means of getting promotion.
Also, Harris (2009) in his own study, attempted to qualify
academic staff in terms of their research output. He
found that most academic lecturers in Australian
universities published in recognized sources. The
researches above point to some important elements in
research publication, and these are the sources where
the articles are published in terms of reputability and
whether the works are cited.
”As evidence of reputability, such publications must be
visible in recognized indexes and databases and
normally should have been cited“ (UNICAL Memo, 2012).
Since the issue of foreign journals came up, it has been
discovered that several of the so called ‘foreign journals’
or ‘foreign publications’ do not appear on the web when
searched. This means that lecturers inadvertently or
knowingly have been patronizing fake journals and used
them for promotion. It is also worrisome that many young
academics want to be professors over-night and thereby
indulge in all kinds of academic fraud to get there. There
is evidence that some lecturers pull out an article from a
published journal and replace it with their own. Those
who are more daring, simply delete the name of an
author in a journal and put in theirs, go to the table of
content page and do same. This is what is going on in
many universities in Nigeria today. Some universities are
now aware of this and are intervening to restore the
dignity and respect of the university system. it is obvious
that lecturers involved in this academic fraud do it for two
reasons: (1) to avoid the rigours of empirical research (2)
to fast track their promotion and by implication increase
their earning capacity. Another culture in respect of
publication is what is popularly known as ‘put me’,
meaning ’put my name’ – a situation whereby one or two
lecturers carry out a study or write an article and put the
names of others who did not participate in the research
work. It is therefore not uncommon to find in the
university system, senior academic staff who have not
contributed meaningfully to knowledge.
Facilities too, for research activities are lacking in the
universities under study. Majority of staff are not strong in
research functions and these deficiencies affect the
quality of graduates from our universities. These
problems have no doubt inhibited research publications in
our institutions of higher learning. Therefore, it becomes
pertinent to ask the question: what is the influence of
publication culture on effective university management.
One hypothesis was formulated to guide the study and is:
Anijaobi-Idem et al. 173
There is no significant influence of publication culture on
effective university management in terms of goal
attainment, facilities management, staff management and
students management.
METHODOLOGY
This study was carried out in old Rivers state of Nigeria.
Old Rivers State comprised of the present Rivers and
Bayelsa States. These two states are part of the six
states that made up South-South geo-political zone and
nine states that made up the Niger Delta Region of
Nigeria. 5 public universities are located in these two
states
– 2 federal and 3 state-owned. 4 of the
universities are used for this study. The reason for not
using the fifth one, although a federal university located in
Bayelsa state is that a trial test was conducted in it. The
design adopted for this study was ex-post facto. The
population comprised of 3487 academic staff, while a
sample size of 1047 subjects was drawn from the
population using stratified random sampling technique.
A
researchers-constructed
instrument
called
“Publication
Culture
and
Effective
University
Management Questionnaire (PCEUMQ) was used for the
study. This instrument was validated by experts in
measurement and evaluation, and used for data
collection. There are 2 sections in it – A and B. Section A
had 5 demographic variables, while Section B, arranged
on 4-point Likert-format, consisted of 30 items, 6 of which
measured each of the five variables isolated for this study
such as publication culture, goal attainment, facilities
management,
staff management
and students’
management. A trial test was carried using split half
reliability method, Spearman Brown Prophesy formula
was employed to establish the reliability estimates. The
coefficients produced figures ranging from 0.63 to 0.85.
These figures confirmed the internal consistency of the
instrument, and so were deemed reliable in executing the
objectives of this study. The administration of the
instrument was carried out by the researchers, with aid
from research assistants employed for the purpose. This
measure produced 90 percent returns rate on the
instrument. Data collected were treated statistically using
descriptive statistics and One Way Analysis of Variance
(ANOVA).
Analysis of results
Hypothesis
There is no significant influence of publication culture on
effective management of University in terms of goal
attainment, management of facilities, management of
staff and management of students. The independent
variable is publication culture while the dependent
variable is effective management of University in terms of
goal attainment, management of facilities, management
of staff and management of students. The publication
was categorized into low, average and high based on the
lecturers mean response score. Lecturers who scored
below the mean in their response were categorized as
low, those who scored within the mean region were
categorized as average and those who scored above the
mean level were categorized as assessing academic
culture in terms of publication as high.
Based on these the influence of publication on
effective management of the University system in terms
of goal attainment, management of facilities,
management of staff and management of students was
computed using the One Way Analysis Of Variance. The
result of the analysis is displayed in tables 1 and 2.
Examination of Table 1 shows that for effective
management of the University system in terms of goal
attainment, lecturers who perceived the influence of
publication as low had the highest mean score
(
=24.75), followed by those who perceived it as high
(
=24.60) and lastly by those who perceived it as
=24.37). With regards to effective
average (
management of the University system in terms of
management of facilities lecturers who perceived
academic culture in terms of those who perceived it as
high ( =24.24).
With regards to effective management of the university
system in terms of staff management, lecturers who
perceived the publication culture as high had highest
mean score (
= 25.12), followed by those who
perceived it as low (
=25.07) and lastly by those who
perceived it as average (
=24.99). With regards to
effective management of the University system in terms
of student management lecturers who perceived
publication culture as high had the highest mean score
(
=25.20) followed by those who perceived it as low
(
=25.17) and lastly by those who perceived it as
average (
=25.04).The one way analysis of variance
of influence of research culture and effective
management of the university system was done. The
result of the analysis is displayed in table 2.
The result presented in Table 2 shows that there is no
significant influence of publication on effective
management of the University system in terms of goal
attainment (F=.521,P>.05), and management of facilities
(F=.317,P>.05), management of staff (F=.118,P>.05) and
management of student (F=.169,P>.05). The null
hypothesis for these four cases was retained and the
174 J. Res. Peace Gend. Dev.
Table 1. A summary of the descriptive statistics of influence of publication culture on effective management
of the for university system
Effective management of the
university system Publication culture
GOATTTOT
FACMNTOT
STFMNTO
STMNGTOT
N
Low
Average
High
Total
Low
Average
High
Total
Low
Average
High
Total
Low
Average
High
Total
SD
400
331
316
1047
400
331
316
1047
400
331
316
1047
400
331
316
1047
24.75
24.37
24.60
24.59
24.48
24.34
24.24
24.36
24.07
24.99
25.12
25.06
25.17
25.04
25.21
25.14
4.84
5.17
5.16
5.04
3.97
4.16
4.09
4.06
3.37
3.61
3.57
3.51
3.77
3.95
3.67
3.79
Table 2. One way analysis of variance (ANOVA) of influence of publication culture on effective management of the
university system
Effective management of
the University system
GOATTTOT
FACMNTOT
STFMATO
Source of
Variation
Between
Groups
Within Groups
Total
Between
Groups
Within Groups
Total
Between
Groups
Within Groups
Total
STMNGTOT
Between
Groups
Within Groups
Total
Sum of
Squares
Df
X2
F
Sig.
26.512
2
13.256
.521
.594
26541.587
26568.099
1044
1046
25.423
10.469
2
5.235
.317
.729
17263.338
17273.807
1044
1046
16.536
2.908
2
1.454
.118
.889
12852.057
12854.965
1044
1046
12.310
4.883
2
2.442
.169
.844
15053.478
15058.361
1044
1046
14.419
A Not Significant at .05; F2, 1044=3.00
alternate hypothesis rejected because the calculated Fratios of .521, .317, 118 and .169 were found to be far
less than the critical F-ratio of 3.00 given .05 alpha levels
and with 2 and 1044 degrees of freedom. This finding
implies that lecturers perceived publications culture as
not having any influence on effective management of
publication as low had the highest mean score
(
=24.48) followed by those who perceived it as
average (
= 24.33) and lastly by of the University
system in terms of goal attainment, management of
Anijaobi-Idem et al. 175
facilities, management of staff and management of
students.
DISCUSSION OF RESULTS
Publication culture and effective management of
university
The result of the analysis of this hypothesis was not
significant. That is, there is no significant influence of
academic publication culture on effective university
management in terms of goal attainment, management of
facilities, management of staff and management of
students. With this result, the null hypothesis was not
rejected in all dimensions on (variables) of effective
university management. By this implication, this finding
suggests that the effective university management in the
aspects of goal attainment, management of facilities,
management of staff and management of students were
not affected by the publication culture existing in the
universities. Therefore, publication culture, no matter how
it is, has nothing to do with the effective university
management in terms of goal attainment, management of
facilities, management of staff and management of
students. A plausible explanation for this finding is that
publication activities are usually carried out outside the
universities, and as such whether facilities are properly
managed or not will not affect it. Similarly, staff may not
be well motivated to participate in university
administration, yet publication activities will continue.
Closely akin to this, is the emphasis placed on
publications by universities in the study area. While some
prefer local publications, others assign more weight to
international publications in their staff promotion criteria,
and in others, any of the publication outlets can be
adopted by staff. So, no publication principles undermine
the effective university management in old River State.
This finding is in consonance with outcome of Wangs
(2002) study which found no significant relationship
between publication culture and effective universities
management. In contrast, the findings of Irtwange and
Orsaah (2009) showed a significant influence of
publication culture by the university staff on effective
university management. It therefore follows that while
publication culture can influence effective university
management significantly in some universities, in others,
it does not.
CONCLUSION
The conclusion drawn from this study was that publication culture in the universities in old Rivers State has no
significant influence on effective university management
in terms of goals attainment, facilities management, staff
management and students management. It therefore
follows that publication culture has nothing to do with
effective management of universities. Thus, universities
can be effectively managed without publication culture
playing any significant role.
RECOMMENDATIONS
Based on the result of the study, the following
recommendations are made:
1. The university authorities should ensure that
research and textbook publications are given pride of
place, whereby a culture of regular publications is strictly
maintained. This will enable academic staff to come out
with findings and ideas that will promote effective
university management.
2. The university authorities should encourage
academic staff through sponsorship to publish regularly.
This will help to boost their ranking both internally and
externally. In addition, regular publication enables the
university authority to attain the goals of university
education, ensures adequate provision and maintenance
of facilities for such purposes as well as managing their
staff and students effectively.
3. Circulation of published works should be
encouraged by the university authority. This will enhance
the reading culture and as well keep university
community abreast with the latest developments in
knowledge domain. This measure will contribute
tremendously towards goal attainment, management of
facilities, management of staff and management of
students.
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