CredibilityRank: A Framework for the Design and Evaluation of Rank-based Credibility Models for Web Applications

The popularization of Web has given rise to new services every day, demanding mechanisms to ensure the credibility of these services. Since now, little has been done to measure and understand the credibility of this complex Web environment, which itself is a major research challenge. From the challenges related to the task of assigning a credibility value to an online service in Web 2.0 applications, we propose a framework for the design, implementation and evaluation of credibility models. To validate the framework, we perform experiments using an actual dataset, from which we evaluated different credibility models using distinct types of information sources, and it allows to compare and evaluate these credibility models. The results show that the credibility framework is applicable and is capable of supporting decision making by users of Web services.