1. Quality of web documents

2. Alpe Adria Master Course :: Medical Informatics :: Dr. J. Dimec: Quality of web documents.2 Which documents to trust?  The problem of recognition of quality documents, that could be trusted, among billions of web documents is acute.  No simple and standard mechanism, that would enable us to recognise good documents, exists.  No institution, that would do such work for us to a great extent and fast enough, exists.  Sometimes the decision will be based on a set of simple, but vague rules and some intuition.

3. Alpe Adria Master Course :: Medical Informatics :: Dr. J. Dimec: Quality of web documents.3 Which documents to trust?  There is no problem with documents that are digitalised versions of paper documents and we would trust paper originals.  However, are these documents really what they seem to be? It is easy to forge the document on a normal academic server, but such misconducts are rare.

4. Alpe Adria Master Course :: Medical Informatics :: Dr. J. Dimec: Quality of web documents.4 Which documents to trust?  With other documents the user should use similar mechanisms as in paper world:  search for the description of peer-review policy, especially in e-journals;  use documents that came from respected academic institutions;  use documents that are being pointed to by respected researchers or research groups;  use documents that are part of respected digital library with well-defined collection policy.

5. Alpe Adria Master Course :: Medical Informatics :: Dr. J. Dimec: Quality of web documents.5 Rules of a thumb  Is the page signed?   If it is signed, is the author qualified?  Is the page dated?   If it is dated, is it regularly updated?  Is the page sponsored? Who is the sponsor?   Does the information show bias?   Are there any advertisements on page?(?)  Is the page itself a hidden advertisement?   Is the page professionally built?  Are the links current?

6. Alpe Adria Master Course :: Medical Informatics :: Dr. J. Dimec: Quality of web documents.6 Is the page signed? Example taken from http://lib.nmsu.edu/instruction/evalcrit.html

7. Alpe Adria Master Course :: Medical Informatics :: Dr. J. Dimec: Quality of web documents.7 Is the author qualified? Example taken from http://lib.nmsu.edu/instruction/evalcrit.html

8. Alpe Adria Master Course :: Medical Informatics :: Dr. J. Dimec: Quality of web documents.8 Who is the sponsor?

9. Alpe Adria Master Course :: Medical Informatics :: Dr. J. Dimec: Quality of web documents.9 Is the page regularly updated? Example taken from http://lib.nmsu.edu/instruction/evalcrit.html

10. Alpe Adria Master Course :: Medical Informatics :: Dr. J. Dimec: Quality of web documents.10 Are there any advertisements Example taken from http://lib.nmsu.edu/instruction/evalcrit.html

11. Alpe Adria Master Course :: Medical Informatics :: Dr. J. Dimec: Quality of web documents.11 Example taken from http://lib.nmsu.edu/instruction/evalcrit.html sometimes it is not difficult to judge the page

12. Alpe Adria Master Course :: Medical Informatics :: Dr. J. Dimec: Quality of web documents.12 Institutional help HON (http://www.hon.ch)http://www.hon.ch  Health On the Net Foundation  Founded in 1995 in Geneva, Switzerland.  Trying to promote the reliability and credibility of health information on the Internet.  Trying to standardise rules for Web site developers  to hold to basic ethical standards in the presentation of information;  to help make sure readers always know the source and the purpose of the data they are reading.

13. Alpe Adria Master Course :: Medical Informatics :: Dr. J. Dimec: Quality of web documents.13 Institutional help  A non-profit organisation, that issues Net Foundation Code of Conduct (HONcode) to the institutions that obey HON basic rules.  The institution apply for the HONcode and its web pages are evaluated by the HON staff.  If everything is OK, the institution can put the HONcode sign on its pages.  The site is regularly re-evaluated and can loose the HONcode sign.