Tuesday, August 9, 2011

4 - A little scholarly web geography

4 a - The open web

The web pages we find when we search Google are generally accessible to all users of the Internet. They have typically been placed there by

  • private individuals
  • commercial organisations
  • political organisations
  • non-government organisations
  • educational institutions
  • governments
  • media organisations

Reasons for making material freely available vary also

  • public service
  • social cooperation and networking
  • commercial promotion or marketing
  • public education
  • social or political advocacy

4 b - Scholarly information

Written information that is produced by, and used in, the research process has certain typical characteristics

  • it is the work of clearly identified individuals and groups
  • it has (or should have) undergone stringent quality control and editing processes
  • it continues to inhabit a structured hierarchy of documents with journal articles generally at the apex
  • unlike other web sources it is supposed to be "immutable" - a "version of record" should exist
  • consequently it makes very strong truth claims
  • it is generally copyrighted and access to it may be restricted to licensed users

Next Module – Open Access Publishing

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