Dear All, The links disappeared ! I try to pased here: http://www.firstmonday.org/ http://www.firstmonday.org/issues/issue9_10/wouters/index.html#author http://www.firstmonday.org/issues/issue9_10/wouters/a.gif Best Regards Jesper Jespert wrote:
-------- Original Message -------- Subject: [sociocybernetics] Internet time and the reliability of search engines Date: Mon, 4 Oct 2004 20:42:04 +0200 From: "Loet Leydesdorff" <loet@leydesdorff.net> Reply-To: sociocybernetics@yahoogroups.com To: "'Science & Technology Studies'" <STS@NIC.SURFNET.NL>
First Monday
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Internet time and the reliability of search engines by Paul Wouters, Iina Hellsten, and Loet Leydesdorff
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Abstract Search engines are unreliable tools for data collection for research that aims to reconstruct the historical record. This unreliability is not caused by sudden instabilities of search engines. On the contrary, their operational stability in systematically updating the Internet is the cause. We show how both Google and Altavista systematically relocate the time stamp of Web documents in their databases from the more distant past into the present and the very recent past. They also delete documents. We show how this erodes the quality of information. The search engines continuously reconstruct competing presents that also extend to their perspectives on the past. This has major consequences for the use of search engine results in scholarly research, but gives us a view on the various presents and pasts living side by side in the Internet.
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Loet Leydesdorff Amsterdam School of Communications Research (ASCoR) Kloveniersburgwal 48, 1012 CX Amsterdam Tel.: +31-20- 525 6598; fax: +31-20- 525 3681 loet@leydesdorff.net ; http://www.leydesdorff.net/
The Challenge of Scientometrics ; The Self-Organization of the Knowledge-Based Society
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-- Jesper Tække - MA. Ph.D.-Student - IT University of Copenhagen - Dept. of Digital Aesthetics & Communication - Rued Langgaards Vej 7 - DK-2300 Copenhagen S - Phone +45 7218 5000 - Direct +45 7218 5037 - Fax +45 7218 5001 - http://home16.inet.tele.dk/jesper_t/ - e-mail: jespert@itu.dk