AWARENESS AND PERCEPTION OF INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY PROTECTION RIGHTS AS CORRELATES OF RESEARCH PRODUCTIVITY OF LIBRARIANS IN PUBLIC UNIVERSITIES IN SOUTHERN NIGERIA

Abstract

Research Productivity of Librarians (RPL), which is a major criterion for assessment of librarians in public universities in Nigeria, is facing serious criticism among other categories of academics. There are doubts on the actual intellectuality of the librarians owing to the quality of their research outputs which is alleged of not being subjected to intellectual property protection right (IPPR) test. Previous studies focused largely on trademarks and patent rights, with little attention on awareness and perception of IPPR among Librarians. This study, therefore, was carried out to investigate awareness and perception of IPPR as correlates of RPL in public universities in Southern Nigeria. John Campbell’s Job Performance and John Locke’s Property theories provided the framework, while the descriptive survey design of the correlational type was adopted. Five hundred and fifty-five (326 federal and 229 state) university librarians from 36 (18 federal and 18 state) public university libraries in Southern Nigeria were enumerated. A questionnaire with three sub-scales – Librarians’ Awareness of IPPR (α = 0.88), Librarians’ Perception of IPPR (α = 0.78) and Librarian Research Productivity (α = 0.74) scales – was used. In-depth interview sessions were held with 18 senior librarians. Quantitative data were analysed using descriptive statistics and Pearson product moment correlation at 0.05 level of significance, while qualitative data were content-analysed. The qualifications of Librarians were Ph.D. (23.0%) and Master’s degree (65.7%).The participants were University Librarian (4.0%), Principal Librarian (11.0%), Senior Librarian (17.7%), Librarian I (20.2%) and Librarian II (19.0 %). Poor administration of IPPR (71.3%), high rate of piracy and plagiarism (73.7%) and ignorant of copyrights laws (73.7%) constituted major challenges to RPL. Awareness of IPPR (x̅ = 40.3), perception of IPPR (x̅ = 25.5) and RPL (x̅ = 22.8) were high against the thresholds of 34.7, 21.3, 32.0, respectively, among the librarians. There were significant positive relationships among awareness of IPPR (r = 0.11), perception of IPPR (r = 0.16) and RPL. Perception of IPPR (β = 0.123) made positive significant contribution to the prediction of RPL. The perceived IPPR were mainly the fear of misuse of publications, writers and publishers agreement and publications enforcement. Librarians’ awareness and perception of intellectual property protection rights affected research productivity of librarians in public university in Southern Nigeria. Therefore, concerted efforts should be made by various institutions to expose librarians to research and training opportunities on these rights.