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Quality of web documents. Which documents to trust?. The problem of recognition of quality documents, that could be trusted , among billions of web documents is acute. No simple and standard mechanism, that would enable us to recognise good documents, exists.
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Which documents to trust? • The problem of recognition of quality documents, that could be trusted, among billions of web documents is acute. • No simple and standard mechanism, that would enable us to recognise good documents, exists. • No institution, that would do such work for us to a great extent and fast enough, exists. • Sometimes the decision will be based on a set of simple, but vague rules and some intuition. Alpe Adria Master Course :: Medical Informatics :: Dr. J. Dimec: Quality of web documents.
Which documents to trust? • There is no problem with documents that are digitalised versions of paper documents and we would trust paper originals. • However, are these documents really what they seem to be? It is easy to forge the document on a normal academic server, but such misconducts are rare. Alpe Adria Master Course :: Medical Informatics :: Dr. J. Dimec: Quality of web documents.
Which documents to trust? • With other documents the user should use similar mechanisms as in paper world: • search for the description of peer-review policy, especially in e-journals; • use documents that came from respected academic institutions; • use documents that are being pointed to by respected researchers or research groups; • use documents that are part of respected digital library with well-defined collection policy. Alpe Adria Master Course :: Medical Informatics :: Dr. J. Dimec: Quality of web documents.
Rules of a thumb • Is the page signed? • If it is signed, is the author qualified? • Is the page dated? • If it is dated, is it regularly updated? • Is the page sponsored? Who is the sponsor? • Does the information show bias? • Are there any advertisements on page? (?) • Is the page itself a hidden advertisement? • Is the page professionally built? • Are the links current? Alpe Adria Master Course :: Medical Informatics :: Dr. J. Dimec: Quality of web documents.
Is the page signed? Example taken from http://lib.nmsu.edu/instruction/evalcrit.html Alpe Adria Master Course :: Medical Informatics :: Dr. J. Dimec: Quality of web documents.
Is the author qualified? Example taken from http://lib.nmsu.edu/instruction/evalcrit.html Alpe Adria Master Course :: Medical Informatics :: Dr. J. Dimec: Quality of web documents.
Who is the sponsor? Alpe Adria Master Course :: Medical Informatics :: Dr. J. Dimec: Quality of web documents.
Is the page regularly updated? Example taken from http://lib.nmsu.edu/instruction/evalcrit.html Alpe Adria Master Course :: Medical Informatics :: Dr. J. Dimec: Quality of web documents.
Are there any advertisements Example taken from http://lib.nmsu.edu/instruction/evalcrit.html Alpe Adria Master Course :: Medical Informatics :: Dr. J. Dimec: Quality of web documents.
sometimes it is not difficult to judge the page Example taken from http://lib.nmsu.edu/instruction/evalcrit.html Alpe Adria Master Course :: Medical Informatics :: Dr. J. Dimec: Quality of web documents.
Institutional help HON (http://www.hon.ch) • Health On the Net Foundation • Founded in 1995 in Geneva, Switzerland. • Trying to promote the reliability and credibility of health information on the Internet. • Trying to standardise rules for Web site developers • to hold to basic ethical standards in the presentation of information; • to help make sure readers always know the source and the purpose of the data they are reading. Alpe Adria Master Course :: Medical Informatics :: Dr. J. Dimec: Quality of web documents.
Institutional help • A non-profit organisation, that issues Net Foundation Code of Conduct (HONcode) to the institutions that obey HON basic rules. • The institution apply for the HONcode and its web pages are evaluated by the HON staff. • If everything is OK, the institution can put the HONcode sign on its pages. • The site is regularly re-evaluated and can loose the HONcode sign. Alpe Adria Master Course :: Medical Informatics :: Dr. J. Dimec: Quality of web documents.