Arab Scholars’ Perceptions on The Quality, Reliability, and Adequacy of Arabic Digital Content

Abstract

Despite the availability of millions of information resources on the internet, the Arabic digital content represents a relatively small percentage compared with the information available in other languages. The size of Arabic content, the lack of an adequate number of Arabic databases that organize this content and make it available to the Arab reader, and the lack of novelty and originality are the main issues that feature the Arabic content on the internet. The aim of the current study is to clarify the Arab scholars’ perception regarding the quality, reliability, and suitability of Arabic digital content that is available on the internet. A quantitative approach was adopted in this study in order to answer the research questions. A questionnaire was distributed online among a sample of Arab scholars to determine the quality and reliability of the Arabic digital content. Moreover, the questionnaire tried to identify the extent to which the current Arabic digital content meets the growing information needs, to identify the Arab scholars’ uses of Arabic content, and to discover the criteria that determine the digital content suitability. The findings of this study revealed that Arab scholars believe that Arabic digital content is weak and there is a lack of originality. In addition, the results indicated that Arabic digital content on the internet does not satisfy the scholars' needs which enforce them to use English information resources to compensates for the lack of Arabic resources. The study recommended the necessity of establishing mechanisms to support Arabic digital content and increase the academic institutions' role in enhancing Arabic digital content by encouraging and supporting scholarly research in the Arabic language.