EXPLORING RESEARCHERS' DISCOURSES ABOUT PRODUCING, DISSEMINATING AND EVALUATING SCIENTIFIC INFORMATION ON THE WEB. THE CASE OF BIOMEDICAL SCIENCES.

The developments of the Web and the movements towards openness in education and science are leading to new professional practices and ways of experience the academic profession, a phenomenon that has been denominated "Digital Scholarship". However, the research in the field is still to be considered fragmentary and at its infancy. This entails limitations to the assumptions that require further research and narrowing down the focus on disciplines as well as phases of professional life. In this sense the exploratory studies could bring some light on the areas that should be covered with future research on this emerging phenomenon. Taking into account this situation we implemented a set of non-structured interviews with a group of 7 researchers and 3 librarians coming from the field of the Life Sciences and Medicine in the Italian context, in order to explore how the main dimensions of the Digital Scholarship, defined as the production, dissemination and evaluation of scientific information with the adoption of web tools, are experienced in this group. The initial results show that the group of researchers and librarians considered are using partially many of the potential useful tools offered on the Web; therefore, their professional discourses are mostly linked to traditional practices and concepts rather than to the idea of Digital Scholarship. We conclude with some remarks regarding the reasons preventing the engagement of researchers in the biomedical sector to participate in professional practices aligning with the concept of Digital Scholarship, aiming at open to further debate and research.