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A website is merely an online space occupied by an organization or person with one purpose of publishing information (Flavián, Guinalíu & Gurrea, 2006). On the contrary, a scholarly database is a registry of all the websites and webpages available under a certain group or genre where one can find the most relevant websites and pages (LaRowe, 2009).
A website can be a representation of idea from any individual or organization and is not generally regulated whereas scholarly databases are normally well regulated for being authentic in the information that they provide as well as their methodologies of evaluation. It is also necessary for a scholarly database to seek registration from academic bodies world over before it can start operating.
A website, on the contrary, requires just a URL to be produced and a domain name to be purchased following what the website organizer can publish whatever they want without the approval of anyone. The credibility of websites is always questionable for various reasons.
One reason is that the methodology used by non-scholarly publications is not sound enough to reduce biases and to induce logic. Websites normally propagate ideas rather than proving their point through not logic and sense making. Lack of comprehension is also a key issue in the websites because they only highlight a small portion of a scenario that cannot be sufficient to understand any phenomenon as a whole (Zhao, Tan & Zhang, 2009).
One can assess the amount of credibility of a website based on the references that it generates and the sources that it uses for citing information. If the sources are not based on scientific knowledge and comprise of mere speculations and presentation of theories as facts, then the website cannot be rendered as credible.
References:
Flavián, C., Guinalíu, M., & Gurrea, R. (2006). The role played by perceived usability, satisfaction and consumer trust on website loyalty. Information & Management, 43(1), 1-14.
LaRowe, G., Ambre, S., Burgoon, J., Ke, W., & Börner, K. (2009). The Scholarly Database and its utility for scientometrics research.Scientometrics, 79(2), 219-234.
Zhao, D., Tan, C., & Zhang, Y. (2009, September). Evaluating the Enterprise Website Credibility from the Aspect of Online Consumers. In Management of e-Commerce and e-Government, 2009. ICMECG'09. International Conference on (pp. 14-17). IEEE.
