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Librarians play a critical role in curating, organizing and facilitating access to open data (OD) resources, supporting research, learning and information dissemination. This study aims to explore the use of OD for reference services delivery in academic libraries. It is believed that the concept of OD in librarianship refers to the practice of making publicly available data freely accessible, usable and shareable by anyone.

This research examined how the utilization of OD may affect library services and operations. This paper used the systematic review of literature to answer the research questions; hence, it was a desk study.

Given that there has been recently a research shift in linking OD to library metadata, this study revealed some interesting findings. More specifically, it discovered that incorporating OD into reference services can provide several benefits and enhance the quality and relevance of the information provided to library users. In addition, this paper reported that OD enriches reference services by providing comprehensive, current and interdisciplinary information, supporting evidence-based research, enabling data visualization and analysis, fostering community engagement and promoting innovation.

This paper proposes that libraries that possess extensive collections are in a favorable position to embrace the shift toward becoming OD and open big data libraries. It is also believed that academic libraries, through reference services, meet the challenge of providing access to their institutional repositories by holding many sets of data in various formats and providing various interfaces, developing metadata systems for various data streams, supporting all ecosystems of software and data products for reformatting and reusing large and complex data, and support for data sets identifiers. By actively engaging with OD, librarians can play a vital role in facilitating access to information and promoting the use of open knowledge for academic pursuits.

Despite a reduction in poverty the global population in 2015, the incidence of poverty remains very high in Sub-Saharan African countries. Most of the countries in the region are agrarian, with most of their population residing in rural areas, and a majority of the poor in the region are found in Nigeria. This study examined the nexus between participation in nonfarm enterprises (NFEs) and poverty among rural farm households in Nigeria and across the six geopolitical zones.

The Nigerian Living Standard Survey (NLSS) conducted in 2018–2019 by the National Bureau of Statistics was used. We made use of 13,440 farm households with useful information for the purpose of this study. The sample comprises 6,885 households that participated in NFEs and 6,555 nonparticipating households. The data were analyzed with Foster, Greer, and Thorbecke (FGT) (1984) metrics, probit, and fractional probit models at p = 0.05.

The incidence of poverty was lower among the participating households than in the nonparticipating households. Participation in NFEs had a mitigating effect on poverty. We also established that zonal differentials in poverty rates exist among households in all the analyses. Participation in NFEs was influenced by individual, household, and institutional factors and was also able to explain the depth of poverty among the respondents.

It is suggested that poverty alleviation policies should be targeted at improving access to nonfarm economic activities by rural farm households residing in vulnerable geopolitical zones.

This study is the first attempt to profile household poverty based on the type of NFEs they are involved in. The study also provides an insight into the effect of the state of residence on zonal poverty models, which is expedient if the country must achieve Sustainable Development Goal 1 on the eradication of poverty everywhere.

The peer review history for this article is available at: https://publons.com/publon/10.1108/IJSE-06-2023-0493

The level of deterioration of educational facilities, such as leaking classroom roofs, inadequate good seats, obsolete offices, broken shutters and doors, outdated school buildings, power plants and office equipment like ICT media, laboratories, offices and workshops, despite the involvement of Alumni association in the maintenance of educational facilities for the effective actualization of school objectives was a worrisome nightmare in Kogi state. This, therefore, prompted the researchers to explore the Alumni’s participation in plant maintenance for effective implementation of the universal basic education (UBE) programme in public junior secondary schools in Kogi state. The purpose of this study was guided by the research question which stated that to what extent does the Alumni Association participate in plant maintenance for effective implementation of the UBE programme in public junior secondary schools in Kogi state?

A quantitative research approach using a descriptive survey was adopted for the study. The sample was drawn using a proportionate stratified sampling technique comprising 387 participants which consisted of 191 (49%) urban junior secondary school principals and 196 (51%) rural principals in selected UBE junior secondary schools. Alumni’s Participation in Plant Maintenance Questionnaire was used as an instrument for data collection. The data were analysed with the aid of mean and standard deviation for the research question and z-test statistics at 0.05 level of significance and the value of z-crit. of 1.96 was used to determine the rejection or otherwise of the hypotheses.

The descriptive analysis revealed that the average mean set of 2.64 pointed to the fact that the respondents averagely agreed that there was a high extent to which Alumni participate in plant maintenance in urban than rural areas for effective implementation of the UBE programme in public junior secondary schools in Kogi state. This indicates that Alumni contribute to the management of UBE schools in Kogi state, especially in the areas of funding, infrastructural facilities, discipline, politics and quality control. This finding also shows that the contributions of the alumni to educational institutions are still unclear if they have made contributions to education in some areas and none in other areas making their relevance to plant maintenance unclear.

In terms of practical implications, the study has contributed to knowledge in that it is the first of this form of a study carried out in Kogi state, and as such the findings of the research will make contributions to the physique of information on plant maintenance for the profitable implementation of the UBE programme in Kogi state. Besides, the degree of plant preservation for the implementation of the UBE programme among applicable stakeholders in Kogi state is nevertheless at a low extent.

Researchers have conducted studies that show how non-state Alumni members contribute to the administration of education across different states. Some of these studies revealed that Alumni members have assisted schools in the provision of teaching and learning materials at the senior secondary or tertiary education level. There are no sufficient studies to show how these Alumni members have contributed to the implementation of the free education programme, especially in public junior secondary schools in Kogi state and this is the gap this study intends to fill.

The purpose of this paper is to critically examine the multinational oil companies’ (MOCs) corporate social responsibility (CSR) initiatives in Nigeria. Its special focus is to investigate the impact of the global memorandum of understanding (GMoU) on mainstreaming gender sensitivity in cash crop market supply chains in the Niger Delta region of Nigeria.

This paper adopts an explanatory research design with a mixed method to answer the research questions and test the hypotheses. A total of 1,200 rural women respondents were sampled across the Niger Delta region.

Results from the use of a combined logit model and propensity score matching indicate a significant relationship between the GMoU model and mainstreaming gender sensitivity in cash crop market supply chains in the Niger Delta.

This study implies that MOCs’ CSR interventions that improve women’s access to land and encourage better integration of food markets through improved roads and increased mobile networks would enable women to engage in cash crop production.

This implies that improving access to credit through GMoU cluster farming targeted at female farmers would improve access to finance and extension services for women in cash crop production in the Niger Delta.

This research contributes to the gender debate in the agricultural value chain from a CSR perspective in developing countries and is rational for demands for social projects by host communities. It concludes that businesses have an obligation to help solve problems of public concern.

The purpose of this study is to investigate the influences of the characteristics of procurement strategies, in this instance labour-only, on project performance concerning health and safety (H&S), a project performance indicator.

Using non-probability purposeful and snowballing sampling methods, questionnaires were used to collect data from construction professionals in Nigeria. This was then analysed using descriptive (frequency and mean scores) and inferential statistics (Mann–Whitney-U and Kendall's Tau_b tests).

The findings indicate a statistically significant negative correlation between ‘the level of client involvement and ‘fatalities' and a positive one with ‘conducting of health and safety risk assessment' and ‘conducting employee surveys on health and safety attitude’. Poor hygiene is found to be the worst lagging indicator, while conducting of inspection is the most adopted leading indicator of project health and safety performance. It also emerged that there is no significant difference in the health and safety performance of projects procured through the procurement strategy in urban and rural areas.

The study provides valuable insight into the complexities in H&S management due to the high level of client involvement in labour-only procurement system (LoPS) projects and the level of diversity in their responsibilities therein. It creates a fundamental direction for developing a detailed framework or guidance notes for client involvement in the integration of H&S into LoPS projects.

This is the first study that examines the influence of the characteristics of procurement strategy on project health and safety performance. Evidence in the literature shows that project delivery outcomes significantly improve if procurement is strategically used, including when it is considered early in projects. However, integrating H&S into procurement strategies has received little attention.

Studies focusing on the growth of indigenous construction firms (ICFs) are getting dated, and unreflective of recent policy changes in developing countries. This study sought to analyze critical barriers to the growth of ICFs and obtain an unsupervised parsimonious grouping of the barriers for policy improvements.

A mix of quantitative and qualitative research methods was adopted for the study. ICFs in Nigeria were cross-sectionally surveyed based on a set of firm growth barriers obtained from literature and refined by focus group discussion. Descriptive (means, standard deviations, percentages) and inferential (Kruskal-Wallice and Mann-Whitney U test) statistics were used in the analyses of the data. Factor analysis was used to group the variables.

Results showed that “declining” ICFs are more negatively impacted by low construction mechanization/use of labor intensive methods, inadequate geographical reach of operations, and inadequate flow of jobs/low demand than “stunted” and “growing” ICFs. The three main domains of critical barriers to the growth of ICFs were identified in descending order of importance as low patronage, difficulty accessing funds, and business management incapacity.

The study recommends improvements in access to funds for ICFs by increasing the percentage of advance payments, and creating a pool of equipment for easy hire by ICFs. ICFs are advised to seek information on tendering opportunities outside their regions of domicile in order to increase their patronage.

This study reveals differences in the impacts of growth barriers on ICFs at different growth levels. This study also clarifies persisting barriers to the growth of ICFs [primarily construction micro, small and medium-sized enterprises (MSMEs)] from a developing country perspective using a longer list of variables.