Information Technology Reference
In-Depth Information
of publishing online does mean that a raft of incorrect, incoherent and
sometimes deliberately misleading material (see for example Krane,
2006) appears on the web.
The provenance of what we find on the web is therefore of great
importance. If you are searching for information on a particular cancer
drug, for instance, you are likely to attach different import to what you
find depending on whether you are reading information from the
pharmaceutical company that produced it, a competing company, a
patient support group, a cancer charity, a supporter of alternative therapy,
etc. That is, if you know where the information you are finding comes
from. What is needed is an easily identifiable, trustworthy resource - a
brand which you recognize and with which you associate credibility.
Formal publication processes
It has been argued (Roosendaal and Geurts, 1997) that formal
publication can be viewed as four functions, namely, registration
(establishing precedence and intellectual priority), certification (certify-
ing quality), awareness (ensuring accessibility of research) and archiving
(preserving research for future use). It is important to note that
certification includes 'selection', and I would argue that 'awareness'
should actually be split into two functions: discoverability (making sure
research can be found) and dissemination (making research available).
It should be noted that Roosendaal and Geurts' functions are integrated
in journal publishing, but many commentators (see for example Van de
Sompel et al., 2004) have observed that they could be disaggregated
into independent, discrete services.
What Roosendaal and Geurts refer to as 'concrete functions', namely
certification and awareness, form a mechanism for bestowing authority on
the corpus of literature, and thus help to deal with information overload.
Certification
Given the amount of material available, a means of providing selection
and authority is essential for a functional system, no matter how
sophisticated our search and discovery (see below) tools become. In the
scholarly environment, certification is most usually associated with peer
review, but for the certification process to be effective it needs to be
