Trust in the academy: a conceptual framework for understanding trust on academic web profiles
| DOI | https://doi.org/10.1108/JD-01-2021-0010 |
| Published date | 22 September 2021 |
| Date | 22 September 2021 |
| Pages | 192-210 |
| Subject Matter | Library & information science,Records management & preservation,Document management,Classification & cataloguing,Information behaviour & retrieval,Collection building & management,Scholarly communications/publishing,Information & knowledge management,Information management & governance,Information management,Information & communications technology,Internet |
| Author | Helena Francke |
Trust in the academy: a conceptual
framework for understanding trust
on academic web profiles
Helena Francke
Department of Arts and Cultural Sciences, Lund University, Lund, Sweden and
Swedish School of Library and Information Science, University of Bor
as,
Bor
as, Sweden
Abstract
Purpose –Institutional and commercial web profiles that provide biobibliographic information about
researchers are used for promotional purposes but also as information sources. In the latter case, the profiles’
(re)presentations of researchers may be used to assess whether a researcher can be trusted. The article
introduces a conceptual framework of how trust in researchers may be formed based on how the researchers’
experiences and achievements are mobilized on the profiles to tell a multifaceted story of the “self.”
Design/methodology/approach –The framework is an analytical productwhich draws on theories of trust
as well as on previous research focused on academic web profiles and on researchers’perceptions of trust and
credibility. Two dimensions of trust are identified as central to the theoretical construction of trust, namely
competence and trustworthiness.
Findings –The framework outlines features of profile content and narrative that may influence the
assessment of the profile and of the researcher’s competence and trustworthiness. The assessment is
understood as shaped by the frames of interpretation available to a particular audience.
Originality/value –The framework addresses the lack of a trust perspective in previous research about
academic web profiles. It provides an analysis of how potential trust in the researcher may be formed on the
profiles. An innovative contribution is the acknowledgement of both qualitative and quantitative indicators of
trustworthiness and competence, including the richness of the story told about the “self.”
Keywords Trust, Credibility, Cognitive authority, Academic web profiles, Academic social networking sites,
Researchers, Framework, ResearchGate, Academia.edu
Paper type Conceptual paper
Introduction
Researchers, as well as many other professional groups, experience expectations from their
employers, colleagues, journalists and others that they should be visible online. Research is
increasingly competitive, and the most important currency in th e academy is still
contributions in prestigious, peer reviewed publications (e.g. Abrizah et al., 2014;Kjellberg
and Haider, 2018:Nicholas et al., 2014). It is thus in the researcher’s career interest to promote
such publications and to connect themselves with their publications. The academic web
profile is a genre which allows researchers to do this; to display information both about
JD
78,7
192
© Helena Francke. Published by Emerald Publishing Limited. This article is published under the
Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY 4.0) licence. Anyone may reproduce, distribute, translate and
create derivative works of this article (for both commercial and non-commercial purposes), subject to full
attribution to the original publication and authors. The full terms of this licence may be seen at http://
creativecommons.org/licences/by/4.0/legalcode
The author wishes to thank the two anonymous reviewers for comments that helped improve the
article. Many thanks to the Department of Arts and Cultural Sciences at Lund University, Sweden for
funding the research sabbatical which allowed me to work on this article. The author is also grateful to
the participants in the department’s Research Seminar for Mediated Culture and Information for helpful
comments on an early draft of the manuscript.
The current issue and full text archive of this journal is available on Emerald Insight at:
https://www.emerald.com/insight/0022-0418.htm
Received 12 January 2021
Revised 18 August 2021
19 August 2021
Accepted 20 August 2021
Journal of Documentation
Vol. 78 No. 7, 2022
pp. 192-210
Emerald Publishing Limited
0022-0418
DOI 10.1108/JD-01-2021-0010
themselves and their publications to various audiences online. Such profiles are today often
maintained on the employer’s website, although some researchers create their own webpages.
A large number of researchers also make use of commercial platforms, such as ResearchGate
and Academia.edu, where primarily contact information, lists of publications and metrics are
presented.
The function outlined above of these web profiles, and the one which has achieved most
scholarly attention, concerns how the profiles add to and support the researchers as
“entrepreneurial selves”(Br€
ockling, 2016), who promote themselves and, not least, their
publications. At the same time, the profiles also fulfill a need, for various stakeholders, as a
source for learning more about a researcher in the context of activities associated with career
development, employment and collaboration (Greifeneder et al., 2018;Jordan, 2019a;N
andez
and Borrego, 2013;Radford et al., 2020). As part of international research communities,
researchers are invited to take on various positions of trust, such as to review publications, sit
on committees for appointments and examinations, or be partners in research projects
(N
andez and Borrego, 2013). Sometimes such appointments are made based on established
professional relationships, but often the individual comes with a recommendation, is
suggested by somebody who read their publications, or simply found though a web search.
Furthermore, needs arise to assess the expertise and credibility of authors of publications,
either before acceptance (by editors) or after publication (by readers), and to assess potential
new staff members (Greifeneder et al., 2018). On such occasions, others will need to learn more
about the researcher, since the research communities in most cases by far exceed the number
of people one can be well acquainted with. In addition to the potential usefulness of web
profiles for such consultation by colleagues, students may rely on them to determine if the
researcher is a suitable supervisor or lab leader who can further their career and life paths.
The web profile is also one of several ways in which professionals, policymakers, journalists
and the general public can review information about the researcher. When a researcher’s web
profile is consulted for such intentions, it is important for the researcher to come across as not
only successful and impactful but as a person who can be trusted. This article contributes to
previous research about academic web profiles through a discussion of how these
promotional online presences may also serve as information sources. In particular, the
article engages with the issue of how various features may contribute in the assessment of
the profiles, and the researchers they (re)present, as sources with a potential to be trusted. The
perspective of trust has largely been missing in previous studies of web profiles.
A commonly expressed theoretical as well as empirical claim is that “assessing the
trustworthiness of members of epistemic communities is fundamental to all scientific
endeavors and represents the groundwork of (scientific) knowledge creation”, as phrased by
Judith Simon (2010, p. 347). She follows up with the question: “Yet which criteria do we have to
assess trustworthy agents?”Academic web profiles may not aid in establishing the classical
answers to that question, which often concern the researcher’s disinterestedness, freedom
from ideological and economic pressure, as well as lack of self-interest in the outcomes of the
research (e.g. Merton, 1973;Shapin, 1994). In fact, such assessments often rely on trust in an
academic system which will ensure that these principles are upheld (Rolin, 2020;Shapin,
1994). However, trust in researchers may also build on other criteria, such as expertise, peer
acceptance and institutional reputation, for which the “biobibliographic information”
(Kaltenbrunner and de Rijcke, 2019) on web profiles can provide support, if not conclusive
evidence.
This article introduces a conceptual framework of how trust in individuals (here:
researchers) may be formed based on documents (web profiles) that mobilize their experiences
and achievements to tell a multifaceted story of the “self.”The framework draws on theories of
trust and on findings from previous research of how academic web profiles are constructed
and of researchers’perceptions of credibility and trust of relevance to online
Academic web
profiles
193
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