Information Literacy Competency Level of Social Science Researchers with Respect to Information Use Ethics A Study

Abstract

Assessment of information literacy competency (ILC) is a process and method to find out whether a person possesses ILC and if so, to what level. The present study is an attempt to gauge the ILC level of social science researchers with respect to information use ethics. On the competency scale overall 79.62 per cent of the respondents, consisting maximum 16.54 per cent from economics followed by 15 per cent from political science, 13.08 per cent from history, 12.69 per cent from sociology, 11.35 per cent from law and 10.96 per cent from geography, were found competent in information literacy (IL) to use information ethically and legally. The rest 20.38 per cent of the respondents, consisting of maximum 4.42 per cent respondents from law 4.04 per cent from geography, 3.46 per cent from history, political science and sociology and minimum of 1.54 per cent from economics were found lacking competency in information literacy to use information ethically and legally. IL skills to deal with information abundance and manage information in the ICT age having multiple similarity detection software and stringent legal provisions are highly important. The study findings have clearly established that a good part of researchers are far behind competency level and possess only baseline or below IL skills on ‘Information Use Ethics’. The findings are supposed to be of great help to all the stakeholders to plan, organise and participate in various information literacy activities and ultimately enhance the ILC of researchers on ‘information use ethics’.