The World Wide Web of Science and Global Expertise: Democratizing Access to Knowledge?

Transcription

1 The World Wide Web of Science and Global Expertise: Democratizing Access to Knowledge? Jenny Fry, Shefali Virkar, Ralph Schroeder Oxford Internet Institute, Oxford University, UK

2 Questions and Method Does the web and the internet reshape access to expertise? Main hypothesis: winner takes all? Democratization? (Matthew effect, Merton) Disciplinary Differences? Pathways to information? Four global topics

3 Approach and Methods Combination of webmetrics, expert panels, interviews Webmetric analysis size, connectivity, density, relation inbound and outbound Interviews: background, combination of online resources used, use of search engines

4 Webmetric analysis of four topics 150 URL s selected Low value for density, some cliques Subgroups of tightly-knit and highly clustered nodes

5 Webmetrics Internet and Society

6 Webmetrics Terrorism

7 Webmetrics Climate Change

8 30 URLs validated by Climate Change Researchers URL Domain Title Know about Usage Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change Global Warming: The Pew Center on Global Climate Change Met Office homepage - The home of the Met Office on the internet United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change World Resources Institute 1 Climate Change : summary of the IPCC report Environmental Change Institute Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research Earth Summit 2002, Johannesburg Summit, Rio+10, Johannesburg 2002, World Su Climatic Research Unit Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research ClimatePrediction.Net gateway European Commission, Climate Change European Climate Change Programme Indicators of Climate Change in the UK Hadley Centre UK Climate Impacts Programme The Climate Group Science and Development Network International Institute for Sustainable Development US EPA: Global Warming Institute for Public Policy Research International Energy Agency World Energy Assessment Report World Bank US Department of Energy House of Parliament: Science and Technology Select Committee Stockholm Environment Institute Energy Institute The Energy Research Institute, India 1 2 Know About? 1 - Yes know about web site 0 - No Intensity of Use 1 - Never 2 - Occasionally (every few months) 3 - Frequently (weekly or daily) From Google.com based on search terms climate change or global warming or ozone depletion

9 Webmetrics HIV/Aids

10 Qualitative Method Four topics, five researchers in each Snowball method Questions about background, disciplines, ways of doing research, use of online resources Validation of top 30 hits retrieved from Google.com using general topic synonyms Answers coded with NVivo

11 Participants: Topics and Disciplines Climate Change Internet and Society HIV/AIDS Terrorism Disciplinary Boundaries Environ. Sci., Physics, biodiversity. Comp. Sci., Political Science, Media/Cultural Studies, Psychology, Sociology Quant social science, Nursing Science Religious Studies, Political Science and International Relations Topic area Energy in developing countries, Global energy policy Public ID Mgt, ehealth, elearning, Use of technology in everyday life Sexual Health, Health policy Religious Violence, International Security

12 Work Organisation & Information Environment Climate Change Internet and Society HIV/AIDS Terrorism Geographic boundaries International International/ national National (crosssector collaboration) Glocal (work mainly alone) Types of sources (Offline&online) International stats Internet surveys, personal home pages, national stats National stats, British HIV treatment guidelines, peerreviewed articles Reports, speeches, journals, books, sensitive data, web pages of terrorist groups, Gatekeepers International development organizations, Global and national policy institutes Policy institutes and academic research centres, e.g. The Pew centre on global climate change Health Protection Agency, BHIVA, MRC, Terrance Higgins Trust, Local Health Authorities, ONS, PubMed Publishers, centres of excellence (CSTPV) Outcomes Policy recommendations Academic and policy implications Health Interventions National Policy Implications

13 Similarities in Changing Work practices Look at known research centres or institutions (plus researchers for internet and society) Resource diet - online resources are used in a complementary way Moving from offline (conferences, s, contacts) to online (homepage and other site recommendations, papers, etc) and vice versa

14 Use of Google is Dominant Do you use search engines? Oh yes, I mean, everybody uses Google. (Terrorism researcher) Which are the other search engines you use? God...I ve used Google so much and so exclusively lately I can t even think of any names! (Terrorism researcher)

15 Only use top pages of results How many hits/results do you typically look at before ceasing a search? It depends if I ve got a lot on ice and depends on time. Say I know I ve got to search for a lot of things and I ve got this session, I might make a decision after the first 10 to stop. If I got a bit more time, then that s 20. If I ve got a lot more time I go to the first 30. I won t go beyond the first 30. And if you ask out of those three what happens most, I d probably say 10 because I m always busy. (Internet & Society researcher)

16 Recognize but tolerate U.S. bias does [the top 30 Google list] differ from your view of what the key organizations, groups or individuals in your specialist field are? No, no I know quite a lot of them. There are a few I don t know of so there s other ones that aren t on there that I use ELDIS so yeah a bit of both. Some of the key ones are there Are there any that you feel are not particularly relevant or missing? Well let s see is AIDS Map on there? AIDS Map should be at the top the national AIDS map is not on there AIDS Map which is a really quite essential one. So, no, it s not all there actually. There s more American stuff here, than UK stuff BHIVA isn t on there the British HIV Association is not on there, and BASH isn t on there so no, its not all there actually. Internationally, I think some of the American and other stuff is there, but UK-wise none of the UK ones are there. (HIV/AIDS researcher)

17 Preconceptions about Google effectiveness and tolerance of irrelevance Is there any particular reason why you use Google? It s easy. Yeah, we all know the Google algorithm is garbage, everybody knows it is garbage, although, it is better than what came before. But the trouble is, whenever somebody offers you something better, it is usually easier to stick to Google and try to work your way around it. (Internet & Society researcher)

18 Validation of Webmetric Results Most sites are missing if we compare what participants say they use on a regular basis with lists of top sites Participants recognize some of the top sites, some surprise at low position of perceived top institutions Within topics, skew towards different sources (i.e terrorism towards news, HIV/Aids towards public information, climate change towards advocacy NGOs, internet and society towards research institutes) Skew towards.gov,.edu (American) and away from minority domains (smaller countries and domains within them, etc.)

19 Gatekeeping Complex matrix of gatekeepers Characteristics vary across topic Terrorism=gov t and NGO research centres and terrorist groups HIV/Aids=publishers of aggregated databases and libraries, national health bodies Climate Change=hybrid research centres Internet and Society=policy and academic research centres

20 Conclusions Increased dependence on online resources (except terrorism = don t rely on one source, and internet and society = use libraries and books) Combinations of online resources Copyright issues Aware of benefit of online presence (except terrorism publicity shy) All dominantly use Google, yet are partially aware of its limits and bias

21 Conclusion If there are strong centralized knowledge institutions, then Google is only a mediator If there are only dispersed and decentralized sources, Google becomes a strong gatekeeper

22 Questions for further research How to combine quantitative and qualitative data? What can be inferred from webmetrics about access to knowledge? How to put the dominance of Google in context? How to characterize the combination of online resources used? How to gauge the shift from offline to online access to knowledge?

23 World Wide Web of Science Earlier paper at OII and NCeSS sites: e#wwwsci