Abstract

The study investigated the availability of online and printed journals where academics in science and engineering faculties in Southern Nigerian University publish their articles in their university libraries. Descriptive survey method was used for the study. Questionnaire addressing the availability, rate of acquisition and currency of 57 journals where the aforementioned academics publish, were given to the University serial librarians, two universities from each geopolitical zone. The result of the findings shows that university of Lagos has the highest availability of 63% of the journals online and 46% in printed form. This is followed Niger Delta University (UDU) with 43.9% online and 75.4% in printed form. Other universities do not have them online while all the universities do not have them in CD-Rom. Only University of Lagos has the highest rate of acquisition 90 and 88% of current available journals, this is followed by Niger Delta University with 73.2%. The paper recommends regular acquisition of journals where Nigerian academics publish and also to have a guiding acquisition policy, building of institutional repository and publishing in open access journals.

Key words: Scholarly communication, academics, science, engineering, institutional repository, Nigerian universities.