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Dimensions of trust in scholarly communication : problematizing peer review in the aftermath of John Bohannon’s ‘Sting’ in Science

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Author

Summary, in English

This study investigates online material published in reaction to a Science magazine report showing the absence of peer-review and editorial processes in a set of fee-charging open access journals in Biology. Quantitative and qualitative textual analyses are combined to map conceptual relations in these reactions; and to explore how understandings of scholarly communication and publishing relate to specific conceptualisations of science and of the hedging of scientific knowledge. A discussion of the connection of trust and scientific knowledge and of the role of peer-review for establishing and communicating this connection provides for the theoretical and topical framing. Special attention is paid to the pervasiveness of digital technologies in formal scholarly communication processes. Three dimensions of trust are traced in the material analysed: (1) trust through personal experience and informal knowledge, (2) trust through organised, internal control, (3) trust through form. The article concludes by discussing how certain understandings of the conditions for trust in science are challenged by perceptions of possibilities for deceit in digital environments.

Department/s

Publishing year

2017-02

Language

English

Pages

450-467

Publication/Series

Journal of the Association for Information Science and Technology

Volume

68

Issue

2

Document type

Journal article

Publisher

John Wiley & Sons Inc.

Topic

  • Information Studies

Keywords

  • Open Access journals
  • Peer review
  • Trust issues
  • John Bohannon’s “Sting” in Science Magazine

Status

Published

Project

  • DigiTrust: Privacy, Identity and Legitimacy in the Digital Society
  • Knowledge in a Digital World: Trust, Credibility and Relevance on the Web

Research group

  • Information Practices: Communication, Culture and Society

ISBN/ISSN/Other

  • ISSN: 2330-1643