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The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) publishes periodical assessment reports informing policymakers and the public on issues relevant to the understanding of human induced climate change. The IPCC uses a set of 7 verbal descriptions of uncertainty, such as unlikely and very likely to convey the underlying imprecision of its forecasts and conclusions. We report results of an experiment comparing the effectiveness of communication using these words and their numerical counterparts. We show that the public consistently misinterprets the probabilistic statements in the IPCC report in a regressive fashion, and that there are large individual differences in the interpretation of these statements, which are associated with the respondents’ ideology and their views and beliefs about climate change issues. Most importantly our results suggest that using a dual (verbal—numerical) scale would be superior to the current mode of communication as it (a) increases the level of differentiation between the various terms, (b) increases the consistency of interpretation of these terms, and (c) increases the level of consistency with the IPCC guidelines. Most importantly, these positive effects are independent of the respondents’ ideological and environmental views.

Purpose - The purpose of this research is to analyse the web sites of large Spanish city councils with the objective of assessing the extent of information disseminated on the internet and determining what factors are affecting the observed levels of information disclosure.Design methodology approach - The study takes as its reference point the existing literature on the examination of the quality of web sites, in particular the provisions of the Web Quality Model (WQM) and the importance of content as a key variable in determining web site quality. In order to quantify the information on city council web sites, a Disclosure Index has been designed which takes into account the content, navigability and presentation of the web sites. In order to contrast which variables determine the information provided on the web sites, our investigation bases itself on the studies about voluntary disclosure in the public sector, and six lineal regressions models have been performed.Findings - The empirical evidence obtained reveals low disclosure levels among Spanish city council web sites. In spite of this, almost 50 per cent of the city councils have reached the \"approved\" level and of these, around a quarter obtained good marks. Our results show that disclosure levels depend on political competition, public media visibility and the access to technology and educational levels of the citizens.Practical implications - The strategy of communication on the internet by local Spanish authorities is limited in general to an ornamental web presence but one that does not respond efficiently to the requirements of the digital society. During the coming years, local Spanish politicians will have to strive to take advantage of the opportunities that the internet offers to increase both the relational and informational capacity of municipal web sites as well as the digital information transparency of their public management.Originality value - The internet is a potent channel of communication that is modifying the way in which people access and relate to information and each other. The public sector is not unaware of these changes and is incorporating itself gradually into the new network society. This study systematises the analysis of local administration web sites, showing the lack of digital transparency, and orients politicians in the direction to follow in order to introduce improvements in their electronic relationships with the public.

Publication and citation decisions in ecology are likely influenced by many factors, potentially including journal impact factors, direction and magnitude of reported effects, and year of publication. Dissemination bias exists when publication or citation of a study depends on any of these factors. We defined several dissemination biases and determined their prevalence across many sub-disciplines in ecology, then determined whether or not data quality also affected these biases. We identified dissemination biases in ecology by conducting a meta-analysis of citation trends for 3867 studies included in 52 meta-analyses. We correlated effect size, year of publication, impact factor and citation rate within each meta-analysis. In addition, we explored how data quality as defined in meta-analyses (sample size or variance) influenced each form of bias. We also explored how the direction of the predicted or observed effect, and the research field, influenced any biases. Year of publication did not influence citation rates. The first papers published in an area reported the strongest effects, and high impact factor journals published the most extreme effects. Effect size was more important than data quality for many publication and citation trends. Dissemination biases appear common in ecology, and although their magnitude was generally small many were associated with theory tenacity, evidenced as tendencies to cite papers that most strongly support our ideas. The consequences of this behavior are amplified by the fact that papers reporting strong effects were often of lower data quality than papers reporting much weaker effects. Furthermore, high impact factor journals published the strongest effects, generally in the absence of any correlation with data quality. Increasing awareness of the prevalence of theory tenacity, confirmation bias, and the inattention to data quality among ecologists is a first step towards reducing the impact of these biases on research in our field.

Purpose - The purpose of this paper is to analyse the corporate governance information disclosed by Spanish listed companies on the internet, with the objective of assessing the extent and the influence of several corporate characteristics on the level of information voluntarily disclosed.Design methodology approach - The study took as its reference the existing literature on the examination of the quality of web sites and the importance of content as a key variable in determining web site quality. To quantify the corporate governance information disclosed by Spanish listed companies, three transparency indexes were designed. To contrast which variables determine the information provided online, the investigation based itself on studies about voluntary disclosure in companies, and three lineal regressions models and an ANOVA analysis were performed.Findings - The empirical evidence obtained reveals that the firms that score highest for transparency are also those that are most likely to use the internet as a channel for the disclosure of corporate governance information. The results show that disclosure levels depend on the degree to which firms are followed by analysts, their listing age, their \"visibility\" and the fact of belonging to the communications and information services industry.Practical implications - The need for this study was clear in view of the increasing interest shown by supervisory authorities for the oversight of the European and US capital markets in regulating not only the content but also the manner in which corporate governance information is disclosed over the internet. During the coming years, regulatory stock market agencies will have to strive to take advantage of the opportunities that the internet offers to increase both the relational and informational capacity of company web sites.Originality value - Corporate governance research has focused mainly on the analysis of the information that firms ought to disclose and the effects of disclosure generally, without considering the media involved. This paper suggests a new approach that examines the relevance of technology, particularly the internet, and orients supervisory authorities in the direction to follow for improving corporate governance transparency in listed companies.

This study examines how academic historians search for, access, and use primary source materials in their research pursuits. Recruited historians completed an online questionnaire about current information practices and potential information needs in archival settings. The results shed light on the most frequent methods historians use to search for primary source materials; the types of primary source documents they are most likely to use; whether they access materials online or in person; their use of digitized archival collections; factors they consider important in their decision to use archival collections; and what might prevent them from using collections.

In recent years, a new and provocative thesis has been presented to the archival profession, to wit: to be an ethical archivist, one must pursue \"social justice\" in all phases of archival practice. While a professional agenda of social justice encompasses the more familiar ideology of \"activist archivist,\" it stretches much farther and has much more profound consequences for our profession. This article challenges both the philosophy and utility of social justice as the end of archival effort and proposes an alternative goal for the profession.

Effectively communicating the complexity of climate change to the public is an important goal for the climate change research community, particularly for those of us who receive public funds. The challenge of communicating the science of climate change will be reduced if climate change researchers consider the links between personality types, communication tendencies and learning preferences. Jungian personality type is one of many factors related to an individual’s preferred style of taking in and processing information, i.e., preferred communication style. In this paper, we demonstrate that the Jungian personality type profile of interdisciplinary, early career climate researchers is significantly different from that of the general population in the United States. In particular, Ph.D. climate researchers tend towards Intuition and focus on theories and the “big picture”, while the U.S. general population tends towards Sensing and focuses on concrete examples and experience. There are other differences as well in the way the general public as a group prefers to take in information, make decisions, and deal with the outer world, compared with the average interdisciplinary climate scientist. These differences have important implications for communication between these two groups. We suggest that climate researchers will be more effective in conveying their messages if they are aware of their own personality type and potential differences in preferred learning and communication styles between themselves and the general public (and other specific audiences), and use this knowledge to more effectively target their audience.

Purpose - This work aims to check the validity of the hypotheses of the agency, signalling, political costs and proprietary costs theories in the disclosure of information online. More specifically, to determine the prevalence of the purposes alleged by those theories, we analyse the effect of industry concentration and other factors on an index of items of information disclosed on corporate web sites, in its entirety as well as its breakdown into information whose elaboration and disclosure is compulsory and information whose elaboration and disclosure is voluntary. Design/methodology/approach - First, a content analysis of the quoted non-financial Spanish companies' web sites was carried out. To do this, three disclosure indexes were created and applied. Then three causal models were estimated by applying a linear regression, taking several factors into consideration. Findings - The findings emphasise the relevance of the hypotheses of political costs theory as the main explanatory factor for voluntary disclosure of information on the internet by quoted Spanish firms. In particular, the hypothesis that the greater the firm's monopolistic power, the more visible the company is and the more political costs it faces. To reduce these costs, such companies have an interest in disclosing greater amounts of information. Practical implications - The researchers have analysed only one year of data from one country, but this analysis is significant because the motives which lead a firm to disclose information can be very different depending on its geographic location, especially if the factors which determine disclosure practices are associated with the political costs that the companies face. Originality/value - This is the first study to examine the effect of industrial concentration on the disclosure of information online. [PUBLICATION ABSTRACT]

Once again Mark Greene has contributed a thoughtful, reasoned, and challenging essay to the archival discourse, demonstrating why his voice has become one of the most compelling in the American archival profession. The breadth and depth of his analysis of critical issues facing the profession are impressive, as are the passion and commitment he demonstrates time after time. The importance of the issues he addresses here can be seen in the lively debates sparked during a brown bag discussion of Greene's essay during the August 2013 Society of American Archivists (SAA) annual meeting in New Orleans. Greene allowed American Archivist editor Gregory S. Hunter to distribute copies of his essay, before publication, as a catalyst for discussion. I am grateful to both of them for allowing me an opportunity to respond to his critique.