Trustworthiness and authority of scholarly information in a digital age: Results of an international questionnaire

Abstract

An international survey of over 3,600 researchers examined how trustworthiness and quality are determined for making decisions on scholarly reading, citing, and publishing and how scholars perceive changes in trust with new forms of scholarly communication. Although differences in determining trustworthiness and authority of scholarly resources exist among age groups and fields of study, traditional methods and criteria remain important across the board. Peer review is considered the most important factor for determining the quality and trustworthiness of research. Researchers continue to read abstracts, check content for sound arguments and credible data, and rely on journal rankings when deciding whether to trust scholarly resources in reading, citing, or publishing. Social media outlets and open access publications are still often not trusted, although many researchers believe that open access has positive implications for research, especially if the open access journals are peer reviewed.

Is Information-Seeking Behavior of Doctoral Students Changing?: A Review of the Literature (2010–2015)

“…For instance, in their small-scale study of graduate students' use of electronic resources at a research university in Taiwan, Wu and Chen (2012) report that satisfaction levels vary between 70% and 95%. Perhaps most telling is the fact that Generation Y students' reliance on Web search engines or library interfaces Niu et al 2010) tends to render them oblivious of the wider publishing environment, such as publisher name, publication title etc., which also adds confusion to the existing and widespread lack of understanding of new publishing models such as open access Fry et al 2009 ;Tenopir 2015b). One may wonder whether students' anxiety to find (enough) material influences their judgement about relevance and use at the expense of quality, as embodied in journal reputation, for instance.…”

“…Looking at the information skills of mathematics students and researchers, Sapa et al (2014) found that although both groups use Google a lot -they particlulary like the varied and quick response they get -students did not evaluate the information retrieved based on author name, affiliation, journal and publisher, like researchers commonly do in that discipline. Indeed, the traditional evaluation criteria for trustworthyness and quality are said to encompass all disciplines and age groups (Tenopir et al 2015b). The authors found that peer review is the most important criteria, followed by content soundness and journal reputation or ranking.…”

Changes in the digital scholarly environment and issues of trust: An exploratory, qualitative analysis

“…Our finding that, despite doubts about open access journals, they were seen as a good thing for the developing world and for outreach has much support in the literature ( Björk, 2012;Nicholas & Rowlands, 2005;Schroter & Tite, 2006;Schroter, Tite, & Smith, 2005 ).…”

Knowledge sharing practices in informal scholarly communication amongst academics in Poland

“…This has been studied at the international level (Tenopir et al 2016) and the national issue (the broadest perspective) has been presented in analyses from United Kingdom (Fullwood, Rowley and Delbridge 2013), Iran (Dokhtesmati and Bousari 2013), South Korea (Kim and Ju 2008), Malaysia (Abrizah, Hilmi and Norliya 2015;Cheng, Ho and Lau 2009;Chong, Yuen and Gan 2014;Nordin, Daud and Osman 2012;Ramayah, Yeap and Ignatius 2013;Sohail and Daud 2009) (Fullwood, Rowley and Delbridge 2013). Existing publications are rather general in nature (Cheng Ho and Lau 2009;Chong, Yuen and Gan 2014;Dokhtesmati and Bousari 2013;Fullwood, Rowley and Delbridge 2013;Nordin, Daud and Osman 2012;Padilla-Meléndez and Garrido-Moreno 2012;Ramayah, Yeap and Ignatius 2013;Sohail and Daud 2009).…”