Journal of Information Ethics最新文献

{"title":"Academic Dishonesty: A Comparative Study of Students of Library and Information Science in Botswana and Zambia","authors":"A. Akakandelwa, P. Jain, Sitali Wamundila","doi":"10.3172/JIE.22.2.137","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.3172/JIE.22.2.137","url":null,"abstract":"IntroductionAcademic dishonesty is an issue of concern world-wide. In universities it has become a stumbling block in genuine research activity, crippling talent and the potential of students who are future leaders in every field. The advent of the Internet has made it easier for students to indulge in dishonest practices. As Young (2001) has pointed out, \"in recent years, professors have been frustrated by the way more and more students use the Internet to cheat-by plagiarizing the work of other students, by copying material from online reference works, by buying term papers from online paper-writing companies, and by other means.\" On the other hand, college and university libraries' records show a bleak picture of borrowing books by the students for their studies and research work. This is an indication that most students depend on web-based information. While this in itself may not indicate that such information is being used unethically, it does point out an enhanced potential for doing so.\"Academic dishonesty consists of any deliberate attempt to falsify, fabricate or otherwise tamper with data, information, records, or any other material that is relevant to the student's participation in any course, laboratory, or other academic exercise or function\" (Delta College, 1999). The Delta College definition further explained that academic dishonesty includes acts of cheating or other forms of academic dishonesty that are intended to gain unfair academic advantage. This includes plagiarism, which is deliberately presenting work, words, ideas, theories, etc., derived in whole or in part from a source external to the student as though they are the student's own efforts. Other academic misconduct includes falsifying or fabricating data, records, or any information relevant to the student's participation in any course or academic exercise, or tampering with such information as collected or distributed by the faculty member. On a similar note, Loyola Marymount University (2012) provides some examples of academic dishonesty, such as cheating and facilitating cheating, plagiarism, falsification of data, unauthorized access to computers or privileged information, improper use of Internet sites and resources, and improper use of non-print media. These various types of academic dishonesty show the complexity of the issue. It is important to understand the complexity and difficulty in order to find effective ways to resolve or minimize dishonesty.To deal with this problem a number of universities have introduced policies and procedures. For instance, University of Botswana's (UB) basic goal is to foster a learning environment that helps students to grow personally and professionally, and to attain academic excellence. UB expects all its students to uphold the highest personal and academic standards of honesty and integrity. A task group on academic dishonesty among UB Students was set up by the Deputy Vice Chancellor's office in March 2005. Consequently, UB ","PeriodicalId":39913,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Information Ethics","volume":"22 1","pages":"141-154"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2013-09-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"69757364","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Values and Ethics","authors":"Randall C. Jimerson","doi":"10.3172/JIE.22.2.21","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.3172/JIE.22.2.21","url":null,"abstract":"Essential Principles and ValuesThe importance of focusing on goals rather than methods also applies, I believe, to the professional life of an archivist. In order to meet their obligations to employers, or to society (in the broadest conceptualization of their public role), archivists should keep focused on the end results they hope to achieve through professional endeavors. As the venerable civil rights song says, \"Keep your eyes on the prize.\" Archivists should not be distracted from their ultimate purposes by the daily obligations of work (putting one foot carefully in front of the other), nor concern for what others are doing (looking leftor right), nor the shorter time frames of projects and deadlines (looking ten feet ahead). To keep such a focus, archivists can begin by articulating their underlying principles, their core values as members of a service-oriented profession. These core values provide a basis for defining archivists' ultimate objectives-the prizes they seek to achieve-and for articulating the rules of ethical behavior they should follow in meeting their societal responsibilities.With many obligations and limited time and resources, it is easy to get tangled up in daily or weekly \"to do\" lists. Working archivists usually focus on the what and how of professional duties, often with little time to reflect on why they are accessioning records, arranging disordered files, preparing finding aids, and answering reference inquiries. Considering professional values and goals openly and mindfully will help archivists to remember the ultimate purposes and societal benefits of the archival enterprise. It will help them to provide better services for researchers, employers, and their fellow citizens. If archivists do this well, it should reinvigorate the archival profession and enable them to fulfill their crucial role in modern society.Such an approach embodies what James O'Toole calls \"a moral theology of archives\": \"When archivists appraise and acquire records, when they represent them in various descriptive media, when they make them available for use, they are engaging in activities that have moral significance beyond the immediate concerns of managing forms of information.\" As O'Toole states, these archival responsibilities suggest \"how a concern for historical accountability is a part of the archival mission, a way of elaborating a practical moral theology of archives.\"1 Such a perspective, I think, must come from a combination of attention to the core values of the profession and consideration of the ethical framework within which archivists fulfill their responsibilities.Archival Codes of EthicsDefining standards of professional conduct provides a key component of establishing the societal role of any group of professionals. It marks a significant difference between an occupation-people working at similar tasks-from a profession, which has both public and private responsibilities to carry out, based on specific expertise, trainin","PeriodicalId":39913,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Information Ethics","volume":"197 1","pages":"21-45"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2013-09-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"69757404","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Archival Ethics and the Professionalization of Archival Enterprise","authors":"Ron Houston","doi":"10.3172/JIE.22.2.46","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.3172/JIE.22.2.46","url":null,"abstract":"IntroductionArchivists ride the horns of dilemmas, constantly juggling priorities to minimize conflict. Such dilemmas include* the need to conserve versus the need to handle delicate items,* the need to acquire versus lack of storage space,* privacy rights versus the public's right to know,* the need for financial patronage versus the need for autonomy,* an item's enduring value versus the cost of its conservation requirements, and* the lure of new preservation technologies versus their unproven lon - gevity.To choose the lemma, that \"horn\" upon which to ride, archivists use intuition, judgment based on training, institutional guidelines, and documents such as the Core Values of Archivists and the Code of Ethics for Archivists (Society of American Archivists, 2011, 2012, 2012). These two documents purport to guide the behavior of archivists who master their 2,300 words. Their histories, found, for example, in Horn (1989, pp. 65 -66) and Cox (2008, pp. 1128-1129), show that committees repeatedly refined these documents, rather than defining fundamental concepts such as \"ethics,\" \"trust,\" and \"profession.\"I suggest that such codes prevent archivists from acting ethically in any sense other than a circular \"according to the code of ethics.\" Karl Popper (1966, p. 552) presented a similar position, excerpted in van Meijl (2000, p. 74) and Wallace (2010, p. 178):What does it [scientific ethics] aim at? At telling us what we ought to do, i.e., at constructing a code of norms upon a scientific basis, so that we need only look up the index of the code if we are faced with a difficult moral decision? This clearly would be absurd; quite apart from the fact that if it could be achieved, it would destroy all personal responsibility and therefore all ethics.Hauptman and Hill (1991, p. 43) also discussed ethical codes with respect to responsibility:[C]ommentators have come to the individual's defense in this context by insisting that since individual members of an organization only do part of a job or only follow instructions (orders) or, by extension, only adhere to an ethical code [emphasis added], they really cannot be held responsible for general negative results.I suggest a somewhat different standard based in part on new or re-worded principal precepts. The bulk of this paper explains the need and derivation of these precepts followed by suggestions for implementation, and the conclusion restates the precepts. Please note that this paper discusses archival enterprise as practiced in the U.S., although the concepts also should apply to archives worldwide. Broader and deeper discussions of archival codes of ethics, per se, occur in Neazor (2007) and Dingwall (2004). Any discussion of ethics, however, requires us archivists to ride our lemmas boldly through several quandaries.First Quandary\"[W]e [philosophers] have first rais'd a Dust, and then complain, we cannot see\" (Berkeley, 1734). Many wits denigrate philosophy through this quotation, and frankly, I ag","PeriodicalId":39913,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Information Ethics","volume":"22 1","pages":"46-60"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2013-09-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"69757418","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Rethinking Archival Ethics","authors":"R. Cox","doi":"10.3172/JIE.22.2.13","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.3172/JIE.22.2.13","url":null,"abstract":"IntroductionEthics has been a persistent topic within the American archival community for more than a half-century, much of it treated, until recently, in the most benign matter (by this I mean that it has been a topic assumed to be important for symbolic reasons but not to possess any substantial practical value in the archivist's daily work). The earliest discussions were mostly about an ethics code, presented almost always as key to claiming that archivists represented not just a community but a profession, and for some, even a discipline (the disciplinary claims have come as a more theoretical and scholarly literature has taken root). We moved from a statement that could be framed and hung on a wall to a more intricate document with specifics encompassing, even advising archivists what to do when they discovered a breach of moral conduct. Would that the discussions had stopped there. Within a relatively brief time the ethics code moved full circle from being an ornamental wall hanging to what became termed an aspirational document, something intended to help archivists understand the ethical dimensions of their work but without fear of censure or other actions if they wandered outside of the parameters of ethical behavior; in other words, the code is intended to give something archivists can aim at but not fret too much if they fall short.1If we examine the professional literature of the 1970s and 1980s, when most of the formative discussion about an ethics code emerged, we can detect some fissures in the ethical foundations of professional practice. In my own essay on professionalism in the mid-1980s, I ended with a comment that archivists had to understand that being professional required both authority and power.2 Even though, just a short time after, archivists began reading about the implicit power of recordkeeping and information systems,3 American archivists generally found it repugnant that they would wield any degree of power. The real substance of issues about power actually emerged within the archival community and its professional associations. While the Society of American Archivists continued to refine its ethics code, these refinements gutted any sense of an ethics process. and the Society's actions in other ways suggested that it had little intention of pursuing an ethical agenda. Debates about the appropriateness of a labor poster on the cover of the American Archivist, access to the records of the Office of Presidential Libraries, and the Protocols for Native American Archival Materials, just to name a few recent cases, have all attested to the significance of ethics as a professional concern and the limitations of American archivists to appropriately frame this topic.4It is not my intent, in this brief essay, to rehash the substance of these debates, especially since I have written about these matters elsewhere. My purpose here is to identify some elements of what I see as the unfinished work on archival ethics, and what I ","PeriodicalId":39913,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Information Ethics","volume":"22 1","pages":"13-20"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2013-09-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"69757329","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"A Note on Civil Disobedience and Professional Ethics Codes","authors":"W. Mitchell","doi":"10.3172/JIE.22.2.61","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.3172/JIE.22.2.61","url":null,"abstract":"In her exemplary book The Ethical Archivist, Elena S. Danielson devotes a chapter to professional ethics codes and points out that \"[m]any informed observers do not feel that complying with the law has any place in a statement on ethics since laws enforce existing power relationships, which may be unfair\" (p. 45). I will argue that including civil disobedience principles in ethics codes may be preferable to rejecting legal compliance as a consideration.First, a few words about the purposes of codes of ethics. Do we need them? If not, then we do not need to worry about the legal compliance issue. How many of us ever consult the American Library Association's Code of Ethics, or the code of the Society of American Archivists? Do such professional codes really provide useful guidance in making difficult ethical decisions? While these empirical questions are often raised, they do not address what I regard as the principal value of a professional code of ethics. Even if we grant an argument that it is impossible for a professional code of ethics to be a useful (not to say perfect) guide to selecting the ethical option that is most just and does the least amount of harm in any given situation, I am persuaded that archivists and librarians should promulgate, observe, and honor their professional codes of ethics because the codes are public statements of values that help define us as professionals. The assertion of these values is an important part of proving ourselves worthy of the trust and respect we seek from our peers, patrons, funding agencies, governing and government officials, members of the general public, etc. Adoption of an ethical code is a hallmark of most professions because the very existence of the code is a stipulation of obligations beyond self-interest. The fact that an ethics code is not a simple and infallible means for choosing between different options does not show that the code has no value. A code of ethics is a public assertion that the profession takes its obligations seriously.Thinking of a professional code of ethics as a statement of values and obligations, we return to the question of whether within those statements there should be any consideration of legal compliance. Setting aside the occasional circumstances where old laws remain in force primarily because no one remembers they exist or notices they no longer serve a purpose, it seems undeniable that current laws may enforce existing power relationships. Certainly some or many laws may be in place to protect minorities and mitigate oppression, but for the purposes of our discussion we are concerned with the conditions where those without power, or with little power, are unable to put into place and enforce laws that are not favored by those who do have power. But does it follow that oppressive, dictatorial, unjust governments never pass just laws? Obviously not, and for the sake of the well-being of oneself and one's fellow citizens it would be best, for example, to ob","PeriodicalId":39913,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Information Ethics","volume":"22 1","pages":"61-65"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2013-09-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"69757609","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Archives and the Ethics of Replevin","authors":"Elena S. Danielson","doi":"10.3172/JIE.22.2.110","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.3172/JIE.22.2.110","url":null,"abstract":"One of the most contentious cultural property stories of the early 21st century is the restitution of displaced treasures, from Nazi-stolen artwork to looted archeological finds to rare manuscripts. \"Replevin,\" according to lawyerarchivist Menzi L. Behrnd-Klodt, \"is one of several ancient common law remedies used to recover wrongfully taken personal property from whomever took it or holds it unlawfully.\"1 When analyzed in simple terms, returning stolen objects to the rightful owner clearly is the right thing to do. In 2012, newspapers reported that Barry H. Landau, a once respected presidential historian, was convicted of removing manuscripts from archives. His finds included letters by Marie Antoinette, Karl Marx, and Franklin Roosevelt. He was sentenced to seven years in jail and forced to pay $46,525 in restitution to dealers who had bought manuscripts from him in good faith. Several thousand documents were recovered from his residence and returned. More displaced documents are currently being traced. By all accounts, justice has been served.2Several spectacularly successful replevin and restitution actions have recently wrested valued acquisitions from well-funded museums.3 In 2007, after years of legal wrangling and public controversy, the J. Paul Getty Museum of Los Angeles returned 40 ancient masterpieces to Italy including a massive statue of Aphrodite. The Metropolitan Museum of Art of New York, which in 1972 acquired a rare, classic painted vase called the Euphronios krater, returned it to Italy in 2008 after lengthy and contentious negotiations. The United States government has cooperated with the government of Mongolia to reclaim and repatriate a dinosaur skeleton, eight feet high and twenty-four feet long, removed from the Gobi desert for sale in the United States. The Mongolian police, Interpol, and the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement were all involved. Through the process of restitution litigation, the long-dead dinosaur has become a celebrated symbol of national pride in Mongolia, and its return scheduled for 2013 is cause for a hero's welcome.4 Treasures occasionally, although less frequently, travel in the opposite direction across the Atlantic. In 2006, the Osterreichische Galerie Belvedere in Vienna was forced to surrender five masterpieces by Gustav Klimt, paintings restituted to distant heirs now living in the United States, again after a protracted court battle.5Like paintings, antiquities and fossils, archives are cultural property and many of the same principles apply. If anything, public records, as a nation's memory, have a stronger claim to inalienability than artwork. This claim has been recognized in treaties for hundreds of years.6 Leopold Auer has identified dozens of international disputes over archival collections. Many such disputes have festered for decades.7 In 1866, France seized 297 volumes of Korean royal archives, which ended up in the Bibliotheque nationale de France where they were cataloged as ","PeriodicalId":39913,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Information Ethics","volume":"22 1","pages":"110-140"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2013-09-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"69757264","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"The Penn State Sex Abuse Scandal: Personal and Psychological Insights","authors":"R. Eisenman","doi":"10.3172/JIE.22.1.8","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.3172/JIE.22.1.8","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":39913,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Information Ethics","volume":"22 1","pages":"8-10"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2013-04-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"69757242","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Rights Gone Wrong: How Law Corrupts the Struggle for Equality","authors":"J. Dilevko","doi":"10.5860/choice.49-5952","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.5860/choice.49-5952","url":null,"abstract":"Rights Gone Wrong: How Law Corrupts the Struggle for Equality Richard Thompson Ford. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2011. Clothbound. 272 pages. ISBN 978-0-374-25035-5. $27.00In November 2011, the long- awaited fifth edition of the American Heritage Dictionary was published. Among the many new words and terms that interested readers could find was \"anchor baby,\" defined as \"[a] child born to a noncitizen mother in a country that grants automatic citizenship to children born on its soil, especially such a child born to parents seeking to secure eventual citizenship for themselves and often other members of their family.\" Within scant weeks, this definition was revised, at the behest of Mary Giovagnoli, director of the Immigration Policy Center, who called it \"poisonous and derogatory\" on a blog post that quickly metastasized. The editors issued an apology, formally designated the term \"offensive,\" and rewrote the definition to emphasize the disparaging way that it is used by those on one side of the debate \"over whether to change the Constitution to deny automatic American citizenship to children born in [the United States] to illegal immigrant parents.\"1 A small but important victory for the rights of immigrants was duly proclaimed.But was it a victory that provided meaningful aid to immigrants? Or was it, as some commentators fulminated, a case of political correctness gone awry?2 Could Giovagnoli's success in orchestrating a change in the original definition of \"anchor baby\" be, on the lexicographic level, an example of what Richard Thompson Ford had in mind when he wrote Rights Gone Wrong: How Law Corrupts the Struggle for Equality?Ford's central thesis is nothing if not bold-sure to be disputed by those who have taken advantage of the necessary gains brought about by American civil- rights laws (CRLs) in the 1960s to wrest for themselves undeserved individual entitlements that, paradoxically, further entrench inequalities. CRLs, he explains, were once vital in combating the \"outright discrimination and overt prejudice\" that was prevalent in the United States some fifty years ago. However, because the \"most serious social injustices\" in the contemporary era \"aren't caused by bias and bigotry\" but rather by long- term structural factors, continued reliance both on the rhetoric of civil rights and the court system to enforce existing CRLs and/or expand their ambit often \"distract[s] attention from ... real problems, emphasizing dramatic incidents that aren't good examples of ... larger injustices\" (pp. 9-10). Engaging in social protests as a matter of \"style\" rather than \"substance\" and conceptualizing rights \"as entitlements to be exploited to the maximum extent possible,\" opportunists such as \"special- interest lobbying groups\" and political activists \"twist[ed] and pervert[ed] the legacy of civil rights\" in order \"to get an edge in competitive schools and job markets, demanding special privileges, a disproportionate share of public reso","PeriodicalId":39913,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Information Ethics","volume":"22 1","pages":"114"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2013-04-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"71137760","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"What Happened to Politics and Ethics? Seven 21st Century Library Philosophers on the Epistemological and Ontological Foundations of Library Science","authors":"D. Bade","doi":"10.3172/JIE.22.1.80","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.3172/JIE.22.1.80","url":null,"abstract":"1. Philosophy in the Library: A Healthy Debate or a State of Confusion?Lately there seems to be considerable debate-or confusion, depending on how you understand it-as to what libraries are, what is the proper object of study for library science, and even whether or not library science is really scientific. Enter the philosophers, and who knew there were so many among us! Although Zwadlo (1997) cited a 1934 paper by Danton in which it was reported that only 1 to 5 percent of library publications have any philosophical discussion, the debate about philosophy for libraries renewed in the 1990s, and Danton would be astonished at the number of publications appearing since the year 2000. One of the most noticeable aspects of this renewed interest is a focus on epistemological and ontological issues, a focus that can be traced back to a series of papers published in Library Quarterly in the 1990s (see Radford [1992], Budd [1995], Zwadlo [1997] and Dick [1999]). That was largely an AngloAmerican academic debate (Dick writing in English from South Africa). The task I set myself in this paper was to look at the debate during the past decade, and especially to consider views from beyond the Anglo-American universe. I chose seven books to examine, looking at them in particular for the political and ethical dimensions of the discussion.2. The Library: A Radically Political InstitutionI shall begin with Serbian librarian Zeljko Vuckovic's 2003 monograph Javne biblioteke i javno znanje (which could be translated in English as Public libraries and public knowledge). Like the other authors discussed below, he focuses on epistemological issues; more than any of the others he is concerned with the potential of libraries for political life. The hypothesis the author wishes to explore is the following:Public libraries are the most open and most democratic form of the institutionalization and use of public knowledge. Hence their key role in designing and building a library information system and infrastructure and their strategic importance in economic and social development. Providing free, equal and unrestricted access to the achievements of culture and civilization, to knowledge, ideas and information, the public library contributes to the development of a democratic public and the quality of life in the community, and the practical realization of the concept of rational communication [Vuckovic, 2003, p. 7].Jesse Shera's social epistemology is a guiding theoretical-methodological orientation in the first half of this work as the author proceeds through a discussion of terminology and chapters on the function of the library, public librarianship as a social institution, the development of the idea of public librarianship, and the legal foundations and history of public libraries in Serbia. The second half of the book looks at public librarianship in the context of international legal regimes, UNESCO declarations and IFLA, the public library as part of postmodern cu","PeriodicalId":39913,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Information Ethics","volume":"22 1","pages":"80-108"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2013-04-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"69757302","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Unethical Practices in Scholarly, Open-Access Publishing","authors":"J. Beall","doi":"10.3172/JIE.22.1.11","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.3172/JIE.22.1.11","url":null,"abstract":"IntroductionThe scholarly publishing industry has witnessed the appearance of numerous scholarly, open- access publishers, an innovation that has made many thousands and even millions of scholarly articles available for free over the Internet. The open- access movement has benefitted from the goodwill of countless authors, organizations, funding agencies, and open- access repositories. Unfortunately, as with any large- scale innovation, there has emerged a cadre of racketeers, distributed worldwide, who seek to exploit the open- access (OA) model for their own financial gain. These unscrupulous publishers abuse the authorpays model of open access publishing only for their own profit, engaging in dishonest, deceptive, and unethical practices, and mocking the goodwill of those who promote scholarly, open- access publishing. This article identifies and examines unethical practices in scholarly, open- access publishing, limiting its focus to those publishers employing the gold \"author- pays\" model.Etiology of the Unethical PracticesOne of the sources of the current problem is the common belief or assumption that all open- access publishing is meritorious, benevolent, and wellintentioned, a belief promoted by librarians and others backing the open- access movement. Many academic librarians blindly and comprehensively promote scholarly, open- access publishing, which means they are partially promoting publishers committing unethical practices.The nature of gold open- access publishing means that those who promote the model must qualify their recommendations. In the traditional scholarly publication model, the market served to prevent or eliminate publishers that engaged in unethical practices; that market control is non- existent in the openaccess model, especially given the minimal startup barriers and low operating costs of open- access publishing. For example, no library would pay for a journal known to be bogus, but bogus journals that are free are unbounded by the startup cost barrier. And because predatory publishers are masters of deception, it is easy for them to fool submitting authors into thinking they are legitimate. Moreover, in the online environment it is especially easy for an unethical publisher to appear legitimate. Also, the very nature of the author- pays model is a conflict of interest; the more articles a gold OA publisher accepts, the more money it earns.Reading a bibliography, vita, or list of published works, it is hard to identify journals from unethical publishers. The titles they use mimic those of legitimate journals and begin with phrases such as \"International Journal of....\" This sideby- side placement of both legitimate and illegitimate journals is a loss, for no longer can one assume that an unfamiliar but legitimate sounding journal is in fact legitimate; further investigation is required, creating new burdens for those engaged in the evaluation of scholarly activities or in judging research grant applications.Other S","PeriodicalId":39913,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Information Ethics","volume":"22 1","pages":"11-20"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2013-04-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.3172/JIE.22.1.11","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"69756915","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}