A Survey of Strategies and Tools for Promoting and Measuring Research Visibility in Central Banks and Monetary Authorities

This paper examines the C used by central banks and monetary authorities (CBMAs) to enhance and measure the visibility of institutional research with a view to drawing from the experiences of other central banks and applying appropriate strategies, and tools to the Central bank of Nigeria. The study was conducted using a Qualitative analysis (QDA) of the contents on the Electronic Bank for International Systems (eBIS)[1] platform for Central Bank and International Institutions Librarians (CBIFI) Group which is hosted by the Bank for International Settlement (BIS), Central Banks and Monetary Websites and the Internet. CBMA Website Survey included 130 CBMAs across all the 6 continents excluding Antarctica. The findings indicate that: Goals of enhancing visibility and measurement of institutional research in CBMAs, includes, showing through metrics, the value of institutional research, enabling the efficient allocation of research funding based sectoral distribution of the research output; Strategies used to enhance the visibility of CBMAs institutional research include, Boosting institutional publications reputation and Impact for search engine discovery; Use of open access tools, Use of unique identifies, Search Engine Optimization, the use of academic social networks (Academia, ResearchGate, Slideshare, Mendeley) and general social media (Facebook, Twitter). Tools used to enhance the visibility of CBMAs institutional research include deployment of library systems, use of research identifiers, citation databases and online reference, and citation managers. Strategies, and tools used to measure the visibility of CBMAs institutional research include web analytics, citation analysis and analysis of repository. Others are, monitoring hit counts to individual files, periodicals, and collections on the publication management systems of the institution. Findings on extent of use of the strategies and tools for research visibility indicate that: CBMAs enhance research visibility by listing publications on their website, using OPAC, Institutional Repositories archives and other platforms. They also use Email, Facebook, Twitter and YouTube to enhance visibility. For the CBMA presence in citation databases which are used to enhance and assess visibility of institutions research, the RePEC accounted for most appearance accounting for 36 representing 37 per given that it is an economic research database. Other citation databases used with lesser frequencies include, Web of Science (WoS), Scopus, Google Scholar (GSc) and RePEc. Key recommendation include the need for the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN), through the Library and Publication and Editorial Unit (PEU) Divisions of the Research Department to develop a strategic plan to promote as well as, accurately measure its institutional research visibility and impact.