Scholarly publishing experience of postgraduate students in Nigerian Universities

ABSTRACT

The study examined scholarly publishing experience among postgraduate students in Nigerian universities. A survey design was employed, using a questionnaire as an instrument for data collection from 919 postgraduate students selected from twelve universities in Southwest Nigeria. The findings revealed that scholarly publication means the procedure of generating, producing, and judging scholarly content, distributing and circulating it to the scholarly community and conserving it for future use, and writing and publishing novel academic ideas in scholarly communication outlets. A (23.7%) of research students had published academic papers and the majority of those research students had 0–2 years’ experience. Knowledge of data analysis, literature search and review, development of relevant research questions, methodology, access to relevant materials, e-mail, phone, identification of relevant keywords, and ICT skills are considered necessary for scholarly publishing. Postgraduate students are aware of predatory journals and publishers. Challenges to scholarly publishing experience are inadequate mentorship and support, skills, knowledge; lack of funds, and limited access to available materials including journal articles, databases, and others. Also, universities in Nigeria should consider funding scholarly publications for any postgraduate students that put in the effort to get published; and mentorship, support, and collaboration with supervisors should be more emphasized.

KEYWORDS:

• Scholarly publishing
• scholarly communication
• publication experience
• publication output
• postgraduate students

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.