Investigating the roles of demographic profiles on usability assessment: case study on CiteGuru application

Abstract

Postgraduate education is the highest education structure in all countries across global. In Malaysia, postgraduate education is usually pursued by several candidates, such as academicians, professionals, and motivated junior learners. As such, one of the requirements of postgraduate education is to have a publication as a mandatory graduation requirement. Thus, one of the challenging issues in the publication is to ensure the quality of the references and citation. However, the lack of mobile applications available that focus on citation management caused several problems such as succumbing to predatory journals, poor citation work, desk rejection, and inaccurate facts. Therefore, the purpose of this study is twofold: first, to investigate the roles and usability assessment of CiteGuru application as a mobile solution for improving learners’ skills, ability, and knowledge on referencing and second, to investigate the roles of demographic profiles on the usability perception among the respondents. A quantitative research methodology using a survey was adopted with 23 expert panels selected based on three distinct positions–academic, industries, and librarians. Data were analysed using statistical package for social science version 26. The result indicates that i) the panel rate the usability of the application as acceptable and ii) demographic profiles (sector, education, and gender) prove insignificant on the usability assessment.