Sausages, coffee, chicken and the web: Establishing new trust metrics for scholarly communication

Sausages, coffee, chicken and the

web: Establishing new trust metrics for scholarly

communicationEduserv Foundation Symposium 2008

Geoffrey BilderDirector of Strategic Initiatives

symposium |simˈpōzēəm|noun ( pl. -sia |-zēə| or -siums )a conference or meeting to discuss a particular subject.• a collection of essays or papers on a particular subject by a number of contributors.• a drinking party or convivial discussion, esp. as held in ancient Greece after a banquet (and notable as the title of a work by Plato).ORIGIN late 16th cent. (denoting a drinking party): via Latin from Greek sumposion, from sumpotēs ‘fellow drinker,’ from sun- ‘together’ + potēs ‘drinker.’

~

Internet Trust

“Internet Trust Anti-Pattern”

• System is started by self-selecting core of high-trust technologists (or specialists of some sort)

• System is touted as authority-less, non-hierarchical, etc.- But this is not true (see A)

• The unwashed masses start using the system.

• The system nearly breaks under the strain of untrustworthy users.

• Regulatory systems are put into place in order to restore order. Sometimes they are automated, sometimes not.

• System is again touted as authority-less, non-hierarchical, etc. But this is not true (see E).

Trust: The Internet User Problem

• Subjected to:

• Spam

• Viruses/Trojans

• Phishing

• Urban myths

• Dodgy content

• And they don’t realize that they have a general trust problem!

Yet.

Trust: The Publisher Problem

• Value proposition being questioned:

• Distribution

• Sales/Marketing

• Editorial//Production

• Accused of profiteering

• Content comparatively hidden

• Brand increasingly hidden

• Deprecation of intermediaries (”stovepiping”)

Trust: The Librarian Problem

• Value proposition being questioned:

• Ownership v.s. Access

• Organization, Categorization

• Curation, Preservation

• Awareness, Outreach

• Content comparatively hidden

• Brand increasingly hidden

• Deprecation of intermediaries (”stovepiping”)

Publisher: Icon BooksISBN:

184046531X

Doesn’t scaleIncreases systemic risk

LocalLocal GlobalGlobal

•Through personal acquaintance•Sometimes Transitive

•Extends trust through proxy •Proxy transitively extends trust to “strangers”

Not enforceable Subject to abuse

Horizontal

Horizontal VerticalVertical

•Amongst equals•Little possibility of coercion

•Within hierarchy (possibly through deference)•Coercion can be used to enforce behavior

Vertical

Horizontal

Local Global

Internet Trust

Scholarly Trust

Internet Trust v.s. Scholarly Trust

Avoiding the Internet Trust Anti-

Pattern

The Connection?•Their success is largely attributable to

their early adoption of simple “trust metrics”

•Based on user-provided “stealth metadata”

•Volunteered

•Inferred

•Resulting in a built-in “social feedback loop”.

The Problems?

•Trust metrics restricted to their particular site.

•Trust metric context is still primitive.

Web 2.0 is about trust

Implications

• What person X is blogging

• What person X is bookmarking- on several social bookmarking sites (e.g. del.isio.us, Connotea)

• What person X is listening to (e.g. Last.FM)

• What person X is taking pictures of (e.g. Flickr)

• What person X's travel schedule is (e.g. iCal)

• What books X is reading or planning on reading (e.g. Amazon wish lists)

Implications (Academic)

• See the realtime annotated bibliography of Dr. W

• Show all the ways in which people that you trust have categorized resource X

• See how your taxonomy compares to the taxonomy of Dr. Y

• See all the resources that your research group is categorizing as Z

But Web 2.0 is the problem too...

Average Articles Read per year per University Faculty Member

*280 with outliersFigure from www.dlib.org/dlib/october03/king/10king.html

Average Minutes per Article by University Faculty Member

Avera

ge M

inute

s Per

Art

icle

Figure from www.dlib.org/dlib/october03/king/10king.html

Paucity of heuristics

We proto-librarians are informed with much fanfare in library school that librarians have a better sense for “source authority and quality” than the average joe, and that the information sources we choose are therefore better than those the average joe chooses when left alone to choose sources.

One would think that a profession that makes sweeping claims like this would spend a lot more time than it does teaching students how to evaluate sources. Leaving that Achilles heel aside, however…

Dorothea Salohttp://cavlec.yarinareth.net/

We publishers will talk with much fanfare to anyone who will listen that publishers have a better sense for “source authority and quality” than the average joe, and that the information sources we choose to publish are therefore better than those the average joe chooses to publish. One would think that a profession that makes sweeping claims like this would spend a lot more time than it does providing mechanisms to help readers evaluate sources. Leaving that Achilles heel aside, however…

Geoffrey Bilder

http://www.laspositascollege.edu/library/magazines_journals.php

Susan E. Beck Collection Development Coordinator New Mexico State University Libraryhttp://lib.nmsu.edu/instruction/evalcrit.html

~www.brown.edu/~gbilder/history/index.html

www.brown.edu/history/index.html

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deductioninductionanalogyintuitionsolution

SummarizationDetailAlternateViewRewriteExplanationSimplificationComplicationUpdateCorrectionContinuation

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Randy Trigghttp://www.workpractice.com/trigg/thesis-chap4.html

naturenikepepsiapple

We want to know

Industry Precedents

The publishing process is invisible

Early Modern Internet

Thank Yougbilder@crossref.org