December 2006

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The Unfathomable Internet

by Donald Christiansen

I often think the Internet is like an unpredictable sea. Some days I race along it like a championship swimmer. But at times I can barely manage a doggie paddle against the chop. Part of the Internet's success is its largely unfettered access and its adaptability to many modes of information transfer. But most information technology gurus agree that this unrestrained accessibility leads to questionable content and decreases the efficiency of online research by scientists, academicians and other serious users.

On the one hand, online peer review speeds up the publication of new research. Advocates see it as an efficient replacement for hard-copy review of technical papers. Yet it is still in an evolutionary stage. Some experiments have been done in posting submitted papers for any and all viewers to comment on, as opposed to a select cohort of peer reviewers. But some critics question the qualifications of self-appointed commentators. Furthermore, imagine the situation if the entire body of unrefereed literature were to appear online for the relatively limited resource of qualified reviewers to contend with. Nevertheless, research papers are among the most reliable literature on the Internet. Even if they are not certified as published or accepted for publication, the author’s affiliation and credentials help reassure the reader.

Wanna Be an Editor?

With the Internet, anyone can be a publisher and anyone can be an author. And, as in the case of Wikipedia, anyone can be an editor. Wikipedia is the free-use online encyclopedia, developed, maintained, and expanded through communal editing. Anyone with access to an Internet-connected computer can edit, correct, or improve information throughout the encyclopedia. Editing is done in real-time, the results appearing immediately.

If a volunteer editor adds an erroneous statement, others are urged to correct it. Editors are expected to draw only from material already published by “reliable and reputable” sources. Wikipedia does not publish original thought or original research, and does not fact-check. Its administrators define the ideal article as balanced, neutral and encyclopedic, containing notable verifiable knowledge, but admit that it may take months or even years for a particular article to meet this standard. They also note that the system’s “radical openness means that any given article may be, at any given moment, in a bad state, such as in the middle of a large edit, a controversial rewrite, or recently vandalized.” Vandalism is a deliberate addition, deletion, or change made to compromise the integrity of an article. Overt forms can be readily imagined — deletion of pages, insertion of obscenities, etc. More subversive vandalism includes changes in dates, and logical-sounding additions intended to mislead.

Despite Wikipedia’s modest claims concerning progress in reaching its goals, it reports that independent studies rate it broadly equivalent in accuracy to articles in competitive encyclopedias such as Britannica. Even so, one of the founders of Wikipedia, hoping to overcome some of its shortcomings, has introduced the concept of an alternative online encyclopedia. Called Citizendium, it would employ experts to assist well-intentioned authors, mediate disputes, and otherwise vet articles before they go online. Anyone interested can apply to be an expert editor for a pilot Citizendium project.

Junk and Beyond

A serious impediment to online research is the burgeoning body of junk. On the one hand, it is usually easy to identify — often self-serving, vituperative, anonymous, prone to errors, poor grammar and misspellings. But it takes time to identify and bypass. More important, there is a growing sea of questionable, “unrated” stuff — neither authentic (peer reviewed or otherwise verified) nor junk. Shouldn’t we have a rating system — a scale of probable veracity? Color codes maybe? I guess not. Who would be the ruling authority, and how would they be recompensed?

Much of this material may look professional, yet be undated, unsigned, lacking references and source material. It is an ethereal puzzle. In the real world of information transfer, we have better clues. The television commentator is not anonymous. We know his biases. A newspaper item is dated, and we know it is in The New York Times (or the National Enquirer). And the orator on a soap box in Hyde Park is not likely to be adding greatly to the world’s intelligence.

Such markers are largely absent for much of the growing gray area of cyberspace. We may have to accept the anonymous and anarchical elements of the Internet, letting the user sense whether the originator of an online item is perched on a soap box or has feet firmly planted on terra firma. Perhaps the best we can hope for is that more intelligence can be imparted to search engines and protocols to help shorten our online search paths.

We shall see.

Resources

For more about peer review and online quality, see:

• Christiansen, D., “Peer Review Reviewed,” IEEE Spectrum, Aug. 1981.

• Hammond, S., “Rational Disagreement in Peer Review,” Science, Technology, and Human Values, Vol. 10, p. 55, 1985.

• Roberts, P., “Scholarly Publishing, Peer Review and the Internet,” First Monday (Peer Reviewed Journal on the Internet), Vol. 4, No. 4, Apr. 5, 1999.

• Arms, W. Y., “What are the Alternatives to Peer Review? Quality Control in Scholarly Publications on the Web,” Journal of Electronic Publishing, Vol. 8, No. 1, Aug. 2002.

• Christiansen, D., “Inside Peer Review,” Today’s Engineer Online, Aug. 2003, www.todaysengineer.org.

• http://en.wikipedia.org

• The Citizendium Project www.citizendium.org/essay.html

Donald Christiansen is the former editor and publisher of IEEE Spectrum and an independent publishing consultant. He can be reached at donchristiansen@ieee.org.