Donald T. Hawkins: Information Credibility on the Web

The article "What Is Credible Information?" by Donald T. Hawkins explores the wide array of information available on the web and the problem with deciding what information is reliable and credible. The World Wide Web has allowed the general public the flexibility and convenience of easily publishing information to the internet world. With the abundance of information on the Web, it is sometimes challenging to judge what information can be trusted and what can't.

Hawkins (1999) compares how simple and undemanding the process of publishing on the Web is, compared to the difficult and strenuous process of publishing for a scholarly journal. Hawkins explains the process of publishing an article in a scholarly journal as a rigorous and time-consuming process involving many steps where the article is scrutinized. This review process helps ensure that only the articles of highest quality are published. In contrast, publishing on the Web is shorter and one does not have to endure the complicated process of peer reviewing. As Hawkins states information published on the web is not reviewed for quality and once published online will not be removed unless the author desires : "Once there, it can remain indefinitely or be removed at the author's discretion. There is no quality control in the Web publishing process."

Since information on the Web is published easily without a review process this poses a problem for the general public who must then decide what information is credible. For example, it would not be smart for an individual to place all their trust on the articles published on Wikipedia since anyone can publish or edit these articles without the information being reviewed. Some individuals are distrusting of all information on the web, and this is also a bad approach to take. There needs to be a balance and an understanding that there is valuable and credible information on the Web, but internet users must be selective and smart in deciding what information comes from a reliable source.

Hawkins recommends using certain criteria in deciding what information on the Web is credible. He mentions that first one must use site reviews that will give the site a rating that explains how trustworthy the site is. He also recommends that internet users use the WWW Virtual Library which is an internet resource that evaluates information resources on the Web. Hawkins notes that: "Although these data [on WWW Virtual Library] are based on only 14 Web sites, they can be used to construct a rank-ordered list of criteria for deciding whether a Web site contains credible information."

In conclusion, it is essential that individuals recognize that information from both electronic and print sources can be trusted, and neither one should be viewed as dismissed or viewed inferior because of their format. Instead, we should more cautious and more strict in evaluating sources from the web. Hawkins emphasizes:" Because of the ephemeral nature of the Web, and the lack of a review process, one must be much more cautious when evaluating information obtained from it than when evaluating information obtained from a peer-reviewed or scholarly journal." The Web has only been around for a much shorter period of time than print sources and it isn't as regulated as print sources. For this reason, we need to be careful to judging the quality of certain internet sources.

Reference:

Hawkins, D. T.(1999). What is credible information? Online 23 (5). Retrieved September 29, 2008, from Library Literature & Information Science Full Text database.