"In Google We Trust? [computer file]" The journal of electronic publishing [1080-2711] 9.1 (2006). 1-.

 

Trust, authority, and reputation are central to scholarly publishing, but the trust model of the Internet is almost antithetical to the trust model of academia. Publishers have been so preoccupied with the brute mechanics of moving content to the online world that they have virtually ignored the challenge that the Internet trust model poses to the scholarly publisher. Publishers can learn much about approaches to handling Internet trust from the actions of major online players outside the publishing industry. Publishers should also benefit from watching the trust models that are being experimented with in the nascent realm of social software applications. Publishers once led the way in establishing the apparatus of trust during the transition from manuscript to print culture in early modern Europe. Ultimately, publishers should again take the lead in helping to establish new mechanisms of trust in what could reasonably be described as "the early modern Internet."