The goal of open access (OA) is to facilitate users’ access to published information sources without costs. This study sought survey awareness, digital literacy skills and use of OA health information sources by clinicians at the Delta State University Teaching Hospital (DELSUTH), Oghara, Delta State. A total of 5 research questions were answered and one hypothesis tested in the study which employed the descriptive survey design. The population is 127 clinicians and the total enumerative sampling technique was used to ensure extensive coverage. It used an online questionnaire to collect data from clinicians. Collected data were analysed using mean ( X ), standard deviation (SD) and Pearson’s Product Moment Correlation Coefficient. Among other results, the study found that, clinicians are not fully aware of OA health information sources; however, they moderately make use of those that they are familiar with because they provide free and unrestricted access to health information, provide access to primary sources of information compared to subscription-based resources and for personal research. In addition, clinicians have high digital skills, and there is no significant relationship between digital skills of clinicians and their use of OA. Furthermore, they experience problem of poor internet connectivity, lack of institutional internet facilities to support them, difficulty in filtering out low-quality or predatory OA content and lack of sufficient time to search and evaluate OA sources. Among others the study recommended that librarians in the teaching hospital should carry out or improve on their awareness activities to ensure that clinicians become aware of different OA health information sources.
Ikolo et al. (Thu,) studied this question.