Susan Gerhart, Do Web search engines suppress controversy?First Monday, January 2004. Abstract: "Web behavior depends upon three interlocking communities: (1) authors whose Web pages link to other pages; (2) search engines indexing and ranking those pages; and (3) information seekers whose queries and surfing reward authors and support search engines. Systematic suppression of controversial topics would indicate a flaw in the Web's ideology of openness and informativeness. This paper explores search engines' bias by asking: Is a specific well–known controversy revealed in a simple search? Experimental topics include: distance learning, Albert Einstein, St. John's Wort, female astronauts, and Belize. The experiments suggest simple queries tend to overly present the "sunny side" of these topics, with minimal controversy. A more "Objective Web" is analyzed where: (a) Web page authors adopt research citation practices; (b) search engines balance organizational and analytic content; and, (c) searchers practice more wary multi–searching."
Posted by
Peter Suber at 1/08/2004 10:18:00 AM.
The open access movement:
Putting peer-reviewed scientific and scholarly literature
on the internet. Making it available free of charge and
free of most copyright and licensing restrictions.
Removing the barriers to serious research.
I recommend the OA tracking project (OATP) as the best way to stay on top of new OA developments. You can read the OATP feed on a blog-like web page or subscribe to it by RSS, email, or Twitter. You can also help build the feed by tagging new developments you encounter.
