Evaluating of Open- access Web-based Articles According to the Academic Staff Attitude of Shiraz University

This research aims at surveying evaluation of open access web based articles by Shiraz university faculty members. Six criteria and some related sub-criteria are extracted from credible resources and related researches. This research is to evaluate the rate of familiarity and use of these criteria by faculty members. Research methodology is survey and data is gathered by means of questionnaire. Data is analyzed by descriptive and analytic statistical methods using SPSS 11.5. The results of survey reveal that Shiraz University faculty members use open acess web-based articles in high amount. The results also show that most of faculty members evaluate retrieved articles but they declare that their familiarity with evaluation criteria is in medium range. The reasons of minority of faculty members who do not evaluate retrieved open access web-based articles are not having time and not needing to evaluate. This study also shows that all seven main criteria are important for faculty members. These criteria in sequence of preference are updateness, content quality, authority control, bibliography, in-content links, and reliability. Sub-criteria in sequence of preference are: In updateness of articles, date of publication; in authority control, author’s expertise and author’s name; in bibliography, accuracy of articles; in in-content links, link to resources in bibliography; and in reliability, accuracy of information. All respondents chose excellent for the quality of articles.