Participation of University Professors in Blogs and Public Web Pages: A Comparative Study of the Departments of Social Sciences and Medical Sciences

Document Type : Original Article

Authors

1 PhD. Student, Faculty of Management, University of Tehran, Tehran, Iran

2 PhD. Student, Department of Knowledge and Information Science, Kharazmi University, Tehran, Iran.

Abstract

Purpose: The aim of this study is to investigate the willingness of university professors in the departments of medical sciences and social sciences to share knowledge on public web pages.
Method: This study was applied in terms of its purpose and utilized a survey method for
data collection, while a comparative method was employed for data analysis. A researcher-made questionnaire was designed to collect data, and its validity was confirmed by four information science experts. The reliability of the questionnaire was also calculated by SPSS software and its value was 0.71, which is an appropriate value. University of Tehran professors in the medical and social sciences departments were selected as comparison units.
Findings: Both the medical and social sciences departments demonstrated a strong inclination to share knowledge on public websites. Both groups do not view disciplinary structural factors, such as the requirement to present content in the form of peer-reviewed articles, as essential for publishing scientific material. This indicates that members of both groups possess a positive attitude toward the public dissemination of content. However, the medical sciences department is 20 percent more likely than the social sciences department to publish scientific material. While only 2% of the medical sciences group has published an article on public web pages, the participation rate of the social sciences group has been higher.
Conclusion: In both social sciences and medical sciences groups, although there is high motivation and positive attitude towards knowledge sharing, obstacles such as technological factors, fear of scientific plagiarism (social sciences) and lack of time (medical sciences) prevent knowledge sharing behavior; but an important and noteworthy point is the issue of simple writing of scientific articles. Regarding the difference between the two groups for sharing scientific information on blogs and public websites, it was found that from the medical sciences group's perspective, writing in simple and understandable language for the general public is much more difficult, while this issue was less evident for the social sciences group. This difference could be due to the sensitivity of medical articles and the difficulty of explaining concepts in simple and understandable language for the general public. Therefore, the difficulty of explaining the material in simple and understandable language for the medical sciences department is one of the most important obstacles to the dissemination of medical science materials. By focusing on these factors and obstacles, knowledge sharing behaviors can be improved.

Keywords

References

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Applied Scientometric Studies
Volume 1, Issue 2
June 2024
Pages 131-150

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