Ethics and trust in digital scholarship
| Published date | 12 April 2011 |
| Pages | 261-276 |
| DOI | https://doi.org/10.1108/02640471111125212 |
| Date | 12 April 2011 |
| Author | Stephen M. Mutula |
| Subject Matter | Information & knowledge management,Library & information science |
Ethics and trust in digital
scholarship
Stephen M. Mutula
Department of Library & Information Studies, University of Botswana,
Gaborone, Botswana
Abstract
Purpose – This paper aims to address issues of ethics and trust in a digital scholarship environment
relating to: accuracy of data, integrity of scholarly research process, electronic publications and
communications; intellectual property rights, confidentiality/privacy and data security. The paper
raises such questions as: To what extent do faculty trust digital research process? How can trust be
nurtured in a scholarly environment where research is undertaken wholly or in part electronically?
Design/methodology/approach – The paper is based on critical analysis of existing literature
especially the theoretical models of ethics and trust drawn from across different disciplines such as
marketing, psychology, management, and information systems.
Findings – Despite the increasing adoption of digital scholarship strategies among universities,
ethics and trust issues are not being addressed. In order for digital scholarship to be effectively
integrated within the institutional operational milieu and institutionalised, a number of interventions
are required, such as: putting in place an e-strategy; a research portal that facilitates data transfer;
knowledge sharing, protocols of uploading content; open access standards; institutional repositories;
e-research librarians responsible for training, faculty and students re-orientation; provision of digital
curation services such as standards, software, and access cyber infrastructure.
Research limitations/implications – The subject of ethics and trust has hardly been researched
in a digital scholarship environment. Consequently, there is limited literature on the subject. Empirical
research is needed to address issues of trust and ethics in digital learning and research environment in
order to leverage the proliferation of technology to optimise benefits for scholarly endeavours.
Practical implications – Institutions of higher learning, especially universities, must strive to
integrate into their learning and research strategies ethical and trust aspects of digital scholarship to
ensure that information and communication technologies that are implemented meet acceptable
scholarly standards with regard to access, usability, productivity and more.
Social implications – Issuesof ethics and trust have become more important than before because of
the evolving knowledge economy and the pervasity of information and communication technology in
society emanating from increased rollout of e-government infrastructures throughout the world by
governments.
Originality/value – The subject of ethics and trust has hardly been addressed in literature in the
context of digital scholarship, yet more educational institutions the world over are moving toward
embracing digital scholarship environments.
Keywords Ethics, Trust,Digital technology, Communicationtechnologies, Learning, Research
Paper type Conceptual paper
Introduction
The digital research process (otherwise known as digital scholarship) in universities
the world over is motivated by the pervasive application of information
communication technologies (ICTs) especially, the growing availability of internet
connections. The internet is affording opportunities for faculty to undertake the whole
The current issue and full text archive of this journal is available at
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Ethics and trust
in digital
scholarship
261
Received 11 December 2010
Accepted 12 December 2010
The Electronic Library
Vol. 29 No. 2, 2011
pp. 261-276
qEmerald Group Publishing Limited
0264-0473
DOI 10.1108/02640471111125212
research process electronically. Furthermore, digital information resources are being
relied upon as primary or complementary information sources of scholarship and
scientific journals that were, a few years ago, produced largely in prin t format, are now
rolled out first as e-versions. Libraries are also transforming their print collections
through digitisation or subscription to e-journals, with or without print alternatives to
make them more accessible and to enhance resource sharing. Through digital
scholarship information is delivered to users 24/7 via intranets, the internet and other
fast and emerging networks.
Digital scholarship may be perceived as a networked, scholarly or academic
environment with pervasive integration of digital technologies in everyday learning
and research, the necessary physical infrastructure both on and outside campus for
access, integration of university information systems such as institutional repositories,
online public access catalogues and content management systems, that allow seamless
access to content needed for research, publication and scholarly communication.
Digital scholarship may include one or more of the following: submission of articles,
peer review and publication, all done electronically; teaching using electronic means;
evaluation and assessment of academic work electronically; electronic collaborative
research; and electronic communications, e-journals, e-books, and a variety of
databases and digital libraries as sources of information (Youngman, 2007). Closely
related to the concept of digital scholarship is e-research, which, O’Brien (2005),
perceives to mean large-scale, distributed, national or global collaboration in research
[that] typically entails harnessing the capacity of information and communication
technology (ICT) systems, particularly the power of high-capacity distributed
computing, and the vast distributed storage capacity fuelled by the reducing cost of
memory, to study complex problems across the research landscape.
The potential of digital scholarship is enhanced by the increased sophistication of
search engines and global library digitisation projects, such as the one that was
undertaken by Google in 2004 involving the digitisation of five large academic libraries
in the US. Moreover, the emerging net generation students are also instrumental in the
growth of digital scholarship because of this group’s almost exclusive dependence on
Google or other search engines for discovery of information resources (Lippincott,
2005). The possibilities also offered by Web 2.0 to modern libraries expand the
opportunities for implementing digital scholarship projects. Web 2.0 refers to second
generation internet-based services such as social networking sites, wikis,
communication tools and folkosonomies that emphasise online collaboration and
sharing among users (O’Really, 2005). Also fuelling digital scholarship in universities
is the concept of Library 2.0 which refers to libraries that integrate all e-resources into a
single point of access with a uniform interface, Online Public Access Catalogue
(consisting of federated search engines), Rich Site Summary, RSS (used for cataloguing
and searching results), a “physical” library that is a loud space for collaboration and
conversation through the use of mobile devices, and the integration of the library with
e-learning. Likewise, the Patron 2.0 concept has emerged and refers to users who not
only consume content but create it as well (Pienaar, 2008). A digital scholars hip
environment is therefore one where online systems facilitate a variety of tasks related
to supporting different scholarly scenarios such as: collaboration, virtual project teams
communication, administration, etc. Through these interactions, large amounts of
personal information is transmitted, collected and processed that could reveal personal
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