PROMOTING ETHICAL COMPLIANCE FOR IMPROVED VISIBILITY OF LECTURERS’ RESEARCH OUTPUTS IN PUBLIC UNIVERSITIES IN RIVERS STATE

Abstract

The study focused on the promotion of ethical compliance for improved visibility of lecturers’ research outputs in public Universities in Rivers State. Three research questions were answered and three hypotheses tested in the study. The design engaged in the study was descriptive survey. The population of the study was a total of 2,784 academic staff of the three public Universities in Rivers State while 351 staff consisting of 214 males and 137 females were sampled using stratified random sampling technique. The instrument used for data gathering was a 15-item questionnaire named “Promoting Ethical Compliance for Improved Visibility of Lecturers Research Outputs Questionnaire” (PECIVLROQ) and the instrument was face and content validated by three experts in Educational Management at University of Port Harcourt while the reliability was estimated as 0.89 using Cronbach Alpha statistics. Out of the 351 copies of questionnaire administered, 342 copies from 209 males and 133 females which represented 97.4% were retrieved and used for analysis. The research questions were answered using mean and standard deviation while the hypotheses were tested using z-test at 0.05 level of significance. The findings from the study showed that the lecturers were mostly aware that they must cite all the sources they used in their research and this followed by the fact that they possessed a good understanding of the concept of plagiarism. The most strongly agreed-upon implications or direct consequences of unethical practices were rejection of research publication and the risk that a lecturer’s publication will be withdrawn. The most prominent factors hindering ethical compliance were the pressure to publish as a requisite for career advancement and insufficient training of lecturers on ethical issues. The study recommended that the publish or perish phenomenon in universities should be replaced with a performance-based promotion system which will limit unethical practices among lecturers.