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. REFERENCES Harris J (2009). Research output in Australian university Economics Departments: An update for 1984-88, Australian Economic Papers (29)s 249-59. Irtwange SV, Orsaah S (2009). Impact of management style on performance indicatory of academic staff. J. Educ. Res. and Rev. 4(12), 602-615. Kyalingonza R (2009). Factors affecting Research output in public universities in Uganda. Unpublished Ph.D Thesis. Makerere university, Kampala, Uganda. Obanya P (2010). System Re-Engineering and institutional Rebranding for building a world class university: The Nigerian perspective being the fourth Annual lecture for Grace Mpipom Foundation delivered at the university of Calabar Hotel Conference Hall, Calabar- Nigeria. Salazar-Clemena RM, Almonte- Acoste (2008). Developing research culture in Philippine Higher Education institutions: Perspectives of university Faculty Sanyal BC, Varghese NV (2006). Research capability in Higher Education sector in developing countries. UNESCO : Paris. UNICAL- Memo, (2012). University of Calabar memo from the Registrar to all academic staff. Wang TM (2002). Organization development: An examination of definition and dependent variables. Org. Dev. J. 20(2), pp-59-70