Excellent question and rich area for necessary research. Let me know what if any of the below helps. Look at http://credibility.stanford.edu/ to see just one example of the need for trans/multi/interdisciplinary effort to tackle this huge issue. Journalists and legal scholars for obvious reasons in the U.S. have taken an interest in "cognitive authority" , credibility, trustworthiness, expertise, etc. Therefore the search strategy keywords as well as the research outlets/journals/databases for this area are shifting. Look in new electronic journals for research publications in this topic. A handful of think tanks in US are now and have traditionally dealt with these issues although the descriptors or subject headings may be different. Authors not publishers often now give the descriptors, not always controlled by vocabulary of the database provider. We are now in the full-text world so we have to find and use the right "buzzwords" although authority, authorship, credibility, trustworthiness are still standards in LIS world A few years ago, Anne C. Weller compiled a monumental bibliography on peer-review mostly in the sci-tech-med world; the book could provide many leads re: the other face of the problem of fraudulence, falsification, and plagiarism
From my corner of the world, as a newly appointed LIS faculty member assessing the big picture for the sake of my students, I see librarians having to bridge the too-real digital divide; integration of technologies and applications; interfaces, interoperability, budget magic to stretch dollars, and focus on supporting the fundamental basics of general public information literacy (another keyword). In library world, important related research areas under: "information seeking behavior" as well as "usability" and "accessibility"
-- Maria E. Gonzalez, PhD gonzalez@ischool.utexas.edu Quoting Fiona Bradley <blisspix@gmail.com>: Is anyone aware of recent research on criteria to evaluate online information, especially if aimed at resarchers and students? For many years, libraries have been providing guides to evaluating information on the Internet that asks students to look at the URL (is it .com or .gov? is it a personal or organiation site?), the published date, the existance of an author byline etc as critiera to evalute online information. These criteria are perhaps becoming a little too simplistic now to really evaluate a site and in many cases can be misleading especially with the rise of academic blogging, online datasets, preprint archives, association sites etc which fall out of these boxes. I'm having difficulty finding critiera that goes beyond looking at the URL, authorship and page design and which looks at appraising all types of information whether printed or online, and evaluating the quality of peer review, accuracy of datasets and statistics and so on. Is anyone aware of work in defining evaluation criteria that can be used by researchers, academics and students? I am aware of some studies of critiera for consumer health sites but I'm more interested in appraisal for the purposes of citing information in research or student papers. thanks, Fiona Bradley Information Services Librarian University of Technology, Sydney _______________________________________________ The Air-L@listserv.aoir.org mailing list is provided by the Association of Internet Researchers http://aoir.org Subscribe, change options or unsubscribe at: http://listserv.aoir.org/listinfo.cgi/air-l-aoir.org Join the Association of Internet Researchers: http://www.aoir.org/