1. Introduction

Research and publication have been and will continue to be a critical factor to reckon with in the career life of librarians especially those in the academic environment. It is, of course, a well-recognized verity that the quality and quantity of an institution’s research is one of the yardsticks of measuring its academic accomplishment and excellence. Hence, research productivity of librarians is worthy of focus as the quality and quantity of their publications are a determining factor in their performance evaluations, promotions, tenure, research grants, and salary increment [6, 16, 37]. Research productivity is often used interchangeably with publication output, publication productivity, research output and sometimes knowledge productivity. Research productivity, therefore, is expressed by the entirety of researches conducted by academic librarians in universities in his or her career over a specified time frame. Research productivity of librarians in Nigeria rest largely on the quality, and often the quantity of research published as textbooks, or chapters in books, journal articles, conference/workshop proceedings, occasional papers, monographs, edited books, bibliographies, abstracts, and indexes published.

To refer to knowledge and feelings about the self, the term self-concept is used [11]. Self-concept according to [22] is how we think, perceive and evaluate one self. [23] expressed it as “a person’s self-concept consists of the beliefs one has about oneself or one’s perception”. Self-concept is a description of oneself, which inherently carries an evaluative value or worth that can either be positive or negative. The way a librarian assesses his/her self in terms of personality, ability and skills, is very important because, it can affect his/her performance and output either positively or negatively. In other words, a librarian can either have a positive or negative self-concept about him/herself.

Demographic variables are varying characteristics, that is, a vital or social statistic that defines an individual, sample group, or population. [20] see demographic variables as independent variables because they cannot be manipulated. Demographic factors are included in this study in order to see if there are any factors that have intrinsic problems associated with them that interfere with an academic librarian’s ability to carry out research. Demographic variables are used in this study as independent variables, they are age, gender, marital status, years of experience, academic status and educational qualifications. Attempts were made to find out if they have any effect on research productivity, which is the dependent variable.

Public universities are those higher educational institutions established by government and controlled by the Ministries of Education which holds ultimate authority over public universities [19]. Public universities in Nigeria are referred to as universities predominantly funded by public means (taxes) through national or state governments. Consequently, there are federal and state universities in Nigeria. At present, there are forty (40) federal universities and (39) state universities, making seventy-nine (79) public universities in Nigeria. The University of Ibadan is the premier university in Nigeria, established in 1948. The first state university in Nigeria is Rivers State University of Science and Technology, established in 1979 (http://www.nuc.edu.ng, 2014). Libraries established and funded by public universities are called academic libraries.

The South-West is a geopolitical zone in Nigeria which comprises 6 states, namely-Ogun, Oyo, Osun, Ondo, Ekiti and Lagos. Having established the relationships among the variables under study, this study, therefore, focuses on demographic factors, and self-concept influence librarians’ research productivity in public universities in South-West Nigeria.

Research objectives

The specific objectives of this study are:

1. To find out the level of self-concept of librarians in public universities in South-West, Nigeria.

2. To ascertain the research productivity level of librarians in public universities in South- West, Nigeria.

3. To determine the degree of correlation between demographic factors and research productivity of librarians in libraries in South-West, Nigeria.

4. To find out the degree of correlation between self-concept and research productivity of librarians in public universities in South-West, Nigeria.

5. Find out if demographic factors and self-concept have joint contribution on research productivity of librarians in public universities in South-West, Nigeria

Research question

1. What is the level of self-concept of librarians in public universities in South-West, Nigeria

2. What is the research productivity level of librarians in public universities in South- West, Nigeria

Hypothesis

H₀1: There is no significant correlation between demographic factors and research productivity of librarians in public universities in South-West, Nigeria.

H₀2: There is no significant correlation between self-concept and research productivity of librarians in public universities in South-West, Nigeria.

H₀3: There is no joint contribution of demographic factors (academic status, gender, marital status, age, highest academic qualification, overall years of experience as a librarian and job tenure) and self concept on research productivity.

2. Literature Review

Self-Concept and Research Productivity

The perception a person holds regarding his own personal existence, a concept of who he is and how he actually fits into the environment he finds himself is very important [31, 39]. Librarians in Nigerian universities are no exception to this assertion. The concept that a librarian has about himself/herself when it comes to performing a particular task may affect his/her productivity and research output, for instance, a librarian with a positive self-concept to writing is likely to use negative feedback about a paper article to improve his/her writing. This is why [4] opined that individuals with positive self-concept evaluate themselves positively and are likely to make favourable inferences about themselves. On the other hand, a librarian with a negative self-concept with regards to writing is likely to take negative feedback as an indication that he/she is indeed a poor writer and is likely to feel more discouraged in future endeavors. This is what [11] refers to as individual with low self-concept. Self-concept also aids in self-regulation and determining appropriate attitude towards attaining goals. Based on a person’s understanding and ability to make predictions about his surroundings, he may choose behaviors from their repertoire that are appropriate for the situation. Self-concept helps to motivate a person by providing goals and encouraging self-improvement [12]. Harter further submitted that a positive self-concept helps maintain a favorable impression of the self and serves to minimize pain and maximize pleasure. A positive self-concept serves as a protecting factor and encourages growth towards happiness. Nevertheless, when a negative self-concept is present, the purpose is not fulfilled.

[21] maintained that enhancing self-concept is a vital goal in and of itself and that self-concept is an important mediating variable that causally impacts a variety of desirable outcomes including librarians’ research productivity. In other words, self-concept can affect personal accomplishment such as research productivity of librarians. With this understanding, there is the probability that a librarian who has a high level of positive self-concept may well display high research productivity. This implies therefore that self-concept, whether positive or negative, holds an implication for either high or low research productivity of librarians in a public university.

Demographic Factors and Research Productivity

Demographic factor has been seen as a frequent factor that has been associated with librarians’ research productivity. [5] identified ten personal characteristics affecting research productivity. These include personal motivation, research training, mentors, early scholarly habit, socialization to academic values, network of productive colleagues, resources and sustainable uninterrupted time. The demographic factors of concern to this study here are age, gender, marital status, years of experience and educational qualification.

A number of studies have been carried out on age and research productivity but, the outcome of such studies produced contradictory correlations or conflicting results. [32] in a study carried out in the United States, revealed that age significantly influenced research productivity. In another study conducted by [19], the respondents agreed that the most important of these demographic factors is the age of the staff member. In his study of academic librarians, age was classified into two main groups; the very new generation (25-35years old), and the old or near- retirement group (nearly 60 years old). Furthermore, academic librarians who are part of the new generation typically like to perform research tasks, but because they are inexperience, they request programmes to help them improve their research skills. By comparison, the group of old academics who are nearly at retiring age rarely participate in research. On the other hand, the outcome of some studies indicated that the relationship between publication outputs and age is not linear implying that the rate of publishing generally did not decline with age. For instance, [16], in a study using a random sampling of 228 colleges and universities in the United States that offered agricultural education, reported that there was no significant evidence that age determined a drop in research productivity.

Gender is another factor associated with research productivity. Addressing research productivity regarding gender, some studies show correlations while others are conflicting. Some studies revealed that female librarians tend to publish papers in small numbers [2]. Further support for this finding is drawn from the works of [28, 16, 27]. [27] found that most male academics have higher publishing rates than their female colleagues. The study carried out by [25] on the analysis of female research productivity in Nigerian universities revealed that female research output was generally low, he reported that 59.5% of female academics published one paper annually; 23.6 % published up to two papers; 1.1 % published three papers; and 15.8 % did not publish on an annual basis. The study concluded that female academics made contributions that are more significant to teaching than research. The reason for this variation as reported by [18] was that women tend to have less specialized research programmes (i.e., writing papers in the same specialty area repeatedly), thereby missing out on a means of achieving higher productivity. On a similar note, [8] study revealed that the differences that existed in the publication output of male and female was attributed to the fact that male librarians have more time to devote to academic matters than female librarians who have to combine their job effectively with household matters. Supporting this is [7], who indicated that, women naturally often have family demands that compete with time to conduct research. On the other hand, opposing result has been found by some researchers, who reported that there are no differences in research productivity due to sex [38, 32, 36].

The potential effect of marital status on research productivity as reported by [35] is centered on the premise that women generally carry more of a family burden than men and this act as a deterrent factor to women allocating additional time to research. [17] who carried out a study among academic staff in Norway also found that married and divorced academics (men and women) were more productive compared to single academics. Similarly, [3] found that academic staff that were married showed higher research productivity than their single counterparts. The rational explanation for this result is that married academic staff are ‘settled’ and this may make them concentrate more on research activities than their single counterparts whose thoughts and problems of being single may deprive them the opportunity and desire of settling down to produce high quality research works. In contrast, [7] discovered that there was either no significant effect or a positive effect on publishing productivity for married women. Corroborating this study is [34] who investigated the effect of marital status on research productivity and his findings was that marital status does not contribute significantly to research productivity of academic staff in United States of America institutions.

While relating years of experience to research productivity, several studies carried out by scholars have revealed that the number of years of experience is a significant predictor of research productivity of academics [14, 26]. “Experience, they say is the best teacher” this assertion therefore has confirmed the study of several researchers. Professional maturity is accompanied by years of accumulated experience on the job. Apparently, the art of writing cannot just be acquired easily. [9] concluded that years of experience in relation to publishing is acquired and manifest with time. [9] study revealed that librarians’ work experience has a positive influence on their publication output. They also noted that the early years of experience could be used to amass professional or subject expertise which requires keen interest and wide reading to enable one develop research skills or expertise and cultivate the habit of writing for publishing.

Educational qualification is another important personal factor that could affect research productivity of librarians as pointed out by [10]. [1] in a study carried out on librarians in colleges of education in Nigeria also identified educational qualification(s) as a significant influence on research productivity. On the contrary, [30] posits that there is simply no evidence that possession of the Ph.D. accounts for any measurable part of variation in publication output, either in library science or in the scholarly system as a whole.

3. Methodology

The descriptive survey research design of correlational type was used for this study. This type of research is aimed at examining the interrelationship between independent variables and dependent variable. This is due to multivariate nature of study and the researchers are interested in establishing the correlations between demographic factors, self-concept and research productivity of librarians in public universities in South- West, Nigeria. For the purpose of this study, research productivity was measured by self-reported numbers of publications that the respondents had published between 2009 and 2014.

The purposive sampling method was used to select 11 out of the 16 public universities in the South-West geopolitical zone of Nigeria. All the librarians in the selected universities were covered using total enumeration method. The method was adopted because the five universities were faced with internal unrest of different natures such as industrial actions, conflicts between the unions and their managements among other problems. The population of the study was 166 librarians working in the 11 public universities (federal and state) in the South-West geopolitical zone of Nigeria which comprises Oyo, Osun, Ogun, Lagos, Ondo, and Ekiti States. Questionnaire was used for data collection. Out of the 166 copies of the questionnaire administered, 142 copies were returned and the response rate was 85.5%. Descriptive statistics, frequency, percentages, mean, standard deviation and Pearson Product Moment Correlation Analysis (correlation matrix), and regression analysis were used to analyzed the data for the study.

4. Results

Table 1 shows the distribution of demographic characteristics of the respondents. The category of institution indicated that 87 respondents (61.3%) are from federal universities and, 55(38.7%) were from state government universities. This finding confirms the dominant nature of federal government owned universities in terms of personnel.

Table 1. Demographic variables of the respondents

Majority of the respondents are librarian II, 42(29.6%), librarian I, are 35(24.6%), Principal Librarian 28 (19.7%), Senior Librarian, 27 (19.0%), Assistant Librarian, 7(4.9%) and, Deputy University Librarian, 3 (2.1%). The table further revealed that the staff structure of the universities is bottom heavy as majority of their personnel falls between librarian I and II. These cadres are for new entrants into the profession. Gender analysis of the respondents indicates that 73 respondents (51.4%) are male and 69 respondents (48.6%) are female. This indicates a fair mix of the respondents by gender.

Librarians who are within the age range of 41-50 years, 80(56.3%), constituted the highest number of the respondents as revealed in (table 1). This is followed by the age range of 31-40 years, 41(28.9%). Following this, were those in the age range of >50 years 13(9.2%) while the least was 8(5.6%) with the age range of 21-30 years. This implies that the majority of the respondents are still in their productive years and that they still have more years to spend in their work places. Reasons being that retiring age for academic librarians in Nigeria is 70 years. Nearly all the respondents are married librarians 134(94.4%), while 8(5.6%) respondents were single. Respondents with masters degree constituted the highest number with 118(83.1%) followed by PhD holders 14(9.9%), M.Phil holders were 9(6.3%) and first degree holders 1(1.7%). One can deduce that the studied libraries have highly qualified staff.

Majority of respondents 83(58.5%) had worked for 1-10 years, 52(36.6%) had work for 11-20 years, 7(4.9%) had worked for b 21-30 years. Moreover, those whose working experience falls between 1-10 years constituted the highest in the studied population.

Table 1 also shows that 133(93.8%) respondents had been in their current post for between 1-10 years, 7(4.9%) had been in their current post for between 11-20 years, 2(1.4%) had been in their current post for above 30 years.

Research Question 1: What is the level of self-concept of librarians in public universities in South- West, Nigeria?

The ranking of the level of self-concept of librarian in public universities in South-West, Nigeria is as follows: almost all the librarians think that they are as good as other librarians with (Mean=3.51); Majority take positive attitude toward themselves (Mean=3.49); Most of them feel that they have a number of good qualities which help them to be a good researcher (Mean=3.46); Several of them trust their ability to do things (Mean=3.44); Majority always express their feelings freely (Mean=3.33); A good number of them agreed that their life add great value for them (Mean=3.24)…. etc This implies that the respondents exhibited high self-concept, more so that the majority of the respondents claimed that they take a positive attitude towards themselves; always express their feeling freely; and their lives add great value to them, etc.

Table 2. The level of self-concept of librarians in public universities in South-West, Nigeria

Research question 2: What is the research productivity level of librarians in public universities in the South-West?

Between 2009-2014, a period of five years, it is revealed in Table 3, that the librarians’ publication output were 16 textbooks with mean and standard deviation of (=1.33, SD=0.89), chapters in books were 65 (=1.59, SD=0.97), co-authored textbooks were 37 (=1.59, SD=0.97), monographs were 16 (=1.78, SD=1.09), Also, there were 51 occasional papers published (=2.43, SD=2.99), 726 articles published in learned journal with mean and standard deviation score of (=5.86, SD=2.74) and; conference proceedings were 71 (=2.15, SD=1.37). It can be inferred therefore that librarians published more of journal articles. Other publications that follow are conference proceedings, chapters in books, occasional papers, co-authored textbook, textbooks and the least are monographs respectively.

Table 3. The research publication level of librarians in public universities in South-West within a period of 5 years (2009-2014)

5. Testing of hypothesis

Hypothesis 1

Demographic Factors and Research Productivity

This hypothesis states that there is no significant correlation between demographic factors and research productivity of librarians in public universities in South-West, Nigeria. To test this hypothesis the data collected on demographic data and research productivity were subjected to Person Product Moment Correlation Analysis. See table below.

Table 4 below shows that while research productivity and job tenure in position (r = .285**, P (.001) <.01) was found significant, there were no significant correlations between research productivity and academic status (r = .098, P(.247)>.05), research productivity and gender (r = .063, P(.456)>.05), research productivity and marital status (r = .012, P(.891)>.05), publication output and age (r = .117, P(.167)>.05), research productivity and academic qualification (r = -.007, P(.785)>.05), research productivity and overall years of experience (r = -.032, P(.785)>.05) respectively. Therefore the null hypothesis is rejected.

Table 4. Correlations matrix showing the relationships between the demographic factors and research productivity of librarians in public universities in South West, Nigeria

Hypothesis 2

Self-concept and Research Productivity

This hypothesis states that there is no significant correlation between self-concept and research productivity of librarians in public universities in South-West, Nigeria. To test this hypothesis, data collected on self concept and research productivity were subjected to Person Product Moment Correlation Analysis. The result is presented in Table 5 below.

Table 5. Correlation between research productivity and self-concept of librarians in public universities in South West, Nigeria

It is shown in the above table that a correlation of .474 exist between research productivity and Self-Concept at 0.01 level (r = .474, N= 142, P < .01). This implies that there is a significant relationship between research productivity and self-concept of librarians in public universities in South West, Nigeria. Hence, the null hypothesis is rejected. This in turn means that librarians’ research productivity has to do with high level of their self concept.

Hypothesis 3:

Demographic Factors, Self-concept on Research Productivity

This hypothesis states that there is no joint contribution of demographic factors (academic status, gender, marital status, age, highest academic qualification, overall years of experience as a librarian and job tenure in position) and self concept on research productivity.

Table 6 shows the joint contribution of the eight independent variables to the prediction of research productivity. The table also shows a coefficient of multiple correlation (R = .318 and a multiple R² of .101. This means that 10.1% of the variance is accounted for by eight predictor variables when taken together. The significance of the composite contribution was tested at P < .05. The table also shows that the analysis of variance (ANOVA) for the regression yielded a F-ratio of 1.866 (significant at 0.05 level). This implies that the joint contribution of the independent variables to the dependent variable was not significant. Therefore the null hypothesis is accepted.

Table 6. The joint contribution of the demographic factors (academic status, gender, marital status, age, highest academic qualification, overall years of experience as a librarian and job tenure in position) and self concept on research productivity

6. Discussion of Findings

The study was designed to find out the level of self-concept of librarians; the research productivity level of librarians; the degree of correlation between self-concept and research productivity of librarians; the degree of correlation between demographic factors and research productivity of librarians; and the joint contribution of demographic factors and self-concept on research productivity.

Descriptive results revealed that a higher proportion of the respondents are from federal institutions, and majority of the respondents are male. Librarian II constitute the highest population of the respondents. Most of the respondents are within the age range of 41-50 years, while almost all the respondents are married. Nearly all the respondents are masters’ holder, Majority of the respondents’ working experience falls between 1-10 years and, lastly almost all the respondents agreed that they had been in their current post for between 1-10 years.

Librarians in public universities in South-West, Nigeria as revealed in this study exhibit high level of self-concept which depict that they hold positive opinion about themselves as well as positive self-competence and evaluative judgments in their academic activities. What librarians feel about themselves go a long way to determining the way they accomplish tasks. This may be attributed to the positive assessment librarians hold concerning their personality, their skills and abilities. This is in agreement with [39] who asserted that one develops his or her positive self-concept through behaving objectively in knowing oneself, always appreciating oneself, being a friend to oneself and always having a positive and rational thinking. High self-concept could be a driving force of self-actualization and work accomplishment of knowledge workers like librarians in any workplace.

In terms of the level of librarians’ research productivity, this study found this to be of high level within the period 2009-2014. While ranking the publication efforts of librarians, it was discovered that articles in learned journals ranked high, followed by publication of chapters in textbooks. The reasons for this may be as a result of the fact that journal articles are relatively easier and cheaper to publish than textbooks, monographs, etc. This is in line with the finding of Ogbomo²⁶ who observed that librarians most often publish in refereed and non-refereed journals in the library and information science field.

The null hypothesis1 (H₀1) which states that there is no significant correlation between demographic factors and research productivity of librarians was rejected. Results of this study indicate that of all the demographic factors, only job in tenure had a significant relationship with research productivity. While other demographic factors (age, gender, education qualifications, academic status and years of experience) had no significant relationship with research productivity. The findings study is in agreement with the findings of [16, 29]. They reported that age has no correlation with research productivity. Relating gender to research productivity, it was revealed by the result of this finding that gender does not affect research productivity of librarians. The result is supported by findings of [32, 36, 19, 15]. They all reported that there is no significant influence of gender on research productivity of librarians. Another finding of this study revealed that there is no significant relationship between years of experience as a librarian and the research productivity of librarians. This support the findings of [33] who argued that total years in the profession had a major impact on total research output, but no significant effect on research productivity. This study did not find any relationship between academic status and research productivity, this corroborates the finding of [36]. He found that academic status is not a significant decider of research productivity. However, this disagrees with the findings of [33] who reported that academic status is a significant predictor of research productivity. This study indicated that there is no correlation between educational qualification and research productivity of the respondents. This finding contradicts that of [1] who reported that educational qualification influences the research productivity of librarians to a significant extent.

The result pertaining to the null hypotheses 2 (H₀2) tested using the Pearson Product Moment Correlation Analysis, revealed that the null hypothesis was rejected. The study findings have established that there is a significant relationship between self-concept and research productivity. That is, a statistically significant impact was found of self-concept on research productivity. This finding therefore, suggests that positive self-concept is a very important mediating variable that causally impacts on librarians’ research productivity. And it also goes further to mean those librarians who see themselves to be more effective, more confident, and more able, accomplish more than people with less positive self-concept. This assertion is in agreement with the position of [21]. They reported that self-concept is ‘hot’ variable that makes things happen and that individuals in all walks of life are likely to accomplish more if they feel competent in what they do, are self-confident, and feel positive about themselves.

The null hypothesis 3 (H₀3) which states that there is no joint contribution of demographic factors (academic status, gender, marital status, age, highest academic qualification, overall years of experience as a librarian and job tenure in position) and self concept on research productivity was accepted. This indicates that demographic factors and self-concept had no significant joint effects on research productivity of the respondents.

7. Conclusions and Recommendations

Librarians occupy a central position in the Nigerian university system, as academics, they need to conduct researches and publish their findings for career advancement as well as to contribute to knowledge. Consequently, research productivity of librarians is very important. The inference that can be drawn from the outcome of this study is that the self-concept of librarians in public universities in the South-West, Nigeria is very high. It plays an important role in the enhancement of research productivity of librarians. The level of research publication of librarians in the last five years is high with articles in learned journals occupying the forefront. That of all the demographic factors only job tenure correlated with research productivity of the librarians studied, others were not significant.

Consequent upon the above findings and conclusion, the following recommendations are proffered.

1. Library management should arrange self-concept training for librarians in public universities to further improve their research productivity.

2. Establishment of regular seminars sessions within the libraries where every librarian will be made to present paper for internal review. This will sharpen their research and writing skills.

3. The work environments, internal and external, of the librarians should be improved upon to boost their morale and self-concept.

4. Librarians should be further encouraged to engage in research and publication through the provision of research grants.

5. Textbooks manuscript produced by the librarians should be sponsored for publication by their university management. This will make them to be more involved in publishing textbooks.