Digital competence and information literacy: clarifying concepts based on a literature review

ABSTRACT

This study aimed to collect input for the definition of a conceptual framework of digital competence for information literacy to be developed in the context of doctoral programs in Education. A systematic literature review methodology was adopted, and several steps were developed that included: preliminary readings and initial mapping, which allowed to define the search terms and expressions; the definition of inclusion and exclusion criteria; the research in databases and aggregators; the pre-selection of articles; and the selection of the corpus of analysis, which included seven articles published in scientific journals with peer review. The studies are mainly focused on information literacy. The two concepts are addressed simultaneously in only three articles. Digital competence is related to the mastery of digital tools, namely to search for information in databases or to define alert strategies. We infer that this competence seems to be closer to more operative concepts, such as digital skills. Information literacy requires the effective use of information involving information search, selection, evaluation and communication. We conclude that it is necessary to cross-reference and triangulate existing studies in order to define the digital competences for information literacy that doctoral students in Education should develop. This is the object of an ongoing doctoral project.

KEYWORDS:

• Digital competence
• information literacy
• doctoral students
• reference framework

1. Introduction

The use of information and communication technologies (ICT) has seen a marked growth in various sectors of citizens’ activities, such as the social, economic, educational and research areas. This trend has changed the supply of goods and services to citizens and refers to a new paradigm based on information and knowledge. In the specific context of education and research, the expansion of ICT has changed the way information is accessed; such information is provided or made available via digital networks, in most cases in open or free mode. This requires specific competencies, as the information is dispersed and its quality is variable. These competencies are related to the effective use of information, which justifies why several studies on digital competences (DC) and information literacy (IL) have been developed on this matter. However, there is no consensus on the definition of terms, due to the fact that they are to some extent close, interrelated and complementary (Alfonzo & Batson, 2014; Bell, 2021). In addition, authors use various terms such as digital literacy, network literacy, media literacy, information competence, library literacy or bibliographic instruction, technology literacy, e-skills, Internet literacy (Kanitar et al., 2011; Lucas et al., 2017). In this research, the terms DC and IL were adopted, given their predominance in the literature consulted. Several authors assume that DC and IL are related to the domain of technological tools for information processing. In terms of postgraduate training, DC and IL are essential for the proper monitoring of ongoing research, the careful selection of information and the adequate production of knowledge (Alfonzo & Batson, 2014; Bell, 2021; Ince et al., 2019). However, there is a lack of references transversal to these competencies and specifying that digital information literacy competences (DILC) should be developed in doctoral courses. There are, however, some DC and IL references to consider, such as those mentioned in the following paragraph.

With regard to DC, the European Digital Competence Framework for Citizens (DigComp) (Vuorikari et al., 2022), in its first competence area – “Information and data literacy”, details competences such as “Browsing, searching and filtering data, information and digital content”, “Evaluating data, information and digital content” and “Managing data, information and digital content” necessary for the processing or effective use of information. In turn, Kanitar (2014) in her framework for assessing competences related to information literacy, explores several dimensions (“scientific information research”, “selection of scientific information” and “processing of scientific information”, and defines criteria and indicators for each of them, implying the use of digital tools for some and not for others. For example, in the information search dimension, the associated competences require the identification of an information need and the clear formulation of a research question, the definition of appropriate search terms and expressions, which may or may not be done through research in a thesaurus, such as the Education Resources Information Centre (ERIC) or the use of databases and aggregators of scientific information.

The aforementioned lack of consensus in the conceptualisation of DC and IL constitutes the problem of the present study, associated with the lack of specific reference frameworks on DILC for advanced education (in this case, PhD) and the lack of studies on IL, for the same level of education. In order to define a DILC reference framework, to be developed in the context of doctoral courses, a systematic literature review was carried out on the conceptualisation of the DC and IL currently required of doctoral students.

The strategies and results of the analysis performed are reported in this article, with the following structure: Introduction (which identifies the problem, the objective and the methodological approach); Methodology; Results and discussion, and Conclusions.

2. Methodology

A systematic literature review was conducted based on the guidelines of leading authors (Brizola & Fantin, 2016; Snyder, 2019), on the conceptualisation of DC and IL in a doctoral context. This section presents the methodological assumptions considered in the literature review carried out, based on the definition of the problem, objectives and the entire research process.

In order to carry out a systematised review, with a view to defining a reference framework for digital information literacy competencies (DILC) to be developed in the context of doctoral courses, through a process of analysis of conceptualised DC and IL that are currently required of doctoral students, research was carried out in databases and aggregators for further analysis. To this end, the stages for accomplishing it were defined, namely i) preliminary readings and initial mapping; ii) definition of articles inclusion and exclusion criteria; iii) research in databases; iv) pre-selection of articles and v) selection of the corpus of analysis. These stages are described below.

2.1. Preliminary readings and initial mapping

This stage was considered important because there is a need for knowledge of the state of the art, with regard to terminology used in the literature in the area under study, as well as related competencies. Texts such as doctoral theses, scientific articles and references were consulted in order to obtain a more diversified view of the terminology used. It was possible to discover and become familiar with the diversity of terms used, indicated in the introduction, and identify the most used terms (DC and IL). It was also possible to identify leading authors on this theme, such as the American Library Association, the Joint Information Systems Committee (Jisc); and others indicated in Table 2. This exercise enabled the definition of the search terms, in English and in Portuguese, namely “information literacy”, “digital competence”, “digital competencies”, “digital skills”, “digital literacy” and for contextualisation “phd student”, “doctoral student”, “postgraduate research student”.

2.2. Definition of inclusion and exclusion criteria

For the research, which was intended to be current and concise, the following inclusion criteria were defined: articles published in scientific journals; publication in the last 10 years, i.e., between 2012 and 2022; texts available in open access or from journals freely accessible from the authors’ institution, i.e., possibility of access to the full text; written in English or Portuguese. Texts that did not meet the inclusion criteria or whose focus was not DC or IL (and associated terms also widely used in the literature, e.g., “digital skills”) were excluded.

2.3. Research process in databases and aggregators

By using the search terms associated with the parameterisation of the inclusion criteria, research was carried out in the following databases and aggregators: SCOPUS; Web of Science; B-on; EBSCO; SCIELO; RCAAP. The search terms were crossed in order to make the search more focused and with a view to obtaining specific results. The search expression used was: AB) (“information literacy” or “digital competence” or “digital competencies” or “digital skills” or “digital literacy”) AND AB (“phd student” or “doctoral student” or “postgraduate research student”).

From this process, an overall result of 81 articles was obtained, presented in Table 1, a summary table of the process for research and selection of the corpus of the analysis.

Table 1. Summary of the research process and selection of the corpus of the analysis.

Search expression	Databases	Results	Unrelated	Repeated	Pre-selected	Corpus
AB (‘information literacy’ or ‘digital competence’ or ‘digital competencies’ or ‘digital skills’ or ‘digital literacy’) AND AB (‘phd student’ or ‘doctoral student’ or ‘postgraduate research student’)	B-on	20	6	8	6	7
	EBSCO	26	9	14	3
	Scopus	19	0	6	13
	Web of Science	16	4	4	8
	Scielo	0	-	-	-
	RCAAP	0	-	-	-
		81	19	32	30

According to the results of the final articles selection, the corpus of the analysis consisted of seven articles (n = 7), presented in the Appendix. They were catalogued according to author, year, title, scientific journal and keywords. For an easy identification of the articles, they were coded, in the catalogue, from A1 to A7. They will be represented by these codes in the subsequent tables included in this text.

2.4. Pre-selection of articles

Next, the first filtering of the results obtained took place. A pre-selection of articles was made for the analysis process. After reading and analysing the title, abstract and keywords, 32 articles were excluded due to repetition and 19 due to being outside the parameterised scope for the research, such as articles within the scope of health sciences, studies outside the doctoral scope, full texts available in other languages, different from those pre-defined for the research, among other nonconformities. This stage resulted in 30 articles (cf. Table 1), pre-selected for the last stage of constituting the corpus of the analysis.

2.5. Selection of the corpus of the analysis

The 30 pre-selected articles underwent, at this stage, a deeper analysis process, namely involving the full reading of the text with a focus on the observance of an explicit approach regarding the conceptualisation of DC and IL of PhD students. This process resulted in the exclusion of 23 articles, which do not take an explicit approach to the conceptualisation of DC and/or IL of doctoral students, and only seven (n = 7) were selected for the corpus of analysis (cf. Table 1 and the Appendix).

2.6. Management of information from the selected articles

To manage the information contained in the selected articles, the Mendeley application, a software to support academic researchers, was used, given its capabilities in the organisation and processing of information, such as the ease of reading the texts in PDF format, with the possibility of annotations, highlights and comments, or the permission to share files. The same resource facilitates the creation of bibliographic references and importing them into MS-Office-Word, the most common software for editing texts, including scientific articles. The seven articles, which constitute the corpus of analysis, were added to the Mendeley-Desktop, and can be checked online or offline.

3. Results and discussion

Based on the analysis of the articles selected for this study (Table A1), different definitions of DC and IL were identified. In turn, the terminology used to name the set of competences related to DC and IL was also diversified.

3.1. Definitions of terms

From the corpus reading, it was noticed that the studies focus mostly on IL (Alfonzo & Batson, 2014; Bell, 2021; Han, 2012; Ince et al., 2019; Israel & Nsibirwa, 2018; Koler-Povh & Turk, 2020; Nierenberg & Dahl, 2021), this concept being addressed in the seven articles of the analysis corpus. Only in three articles are the two concepts addressed simultaneously (Alfonzo & Batson, 2014; Bell, 2021; Ince et al., 2019), although the issue is more focused on IL than on DC. For example, Ince et al. (2019), in the article entitled – The role of libraries in teaching doctoral students to become information-literate researchers: A review of existing practices and recommendations for the future – addresses the DC of PhD students, considering that they require an effective use of technologies for a better understanding of science and subsequent production of knowledge (Ince et al., 2019).

Despite the above, it was possible to collect several definitions (presented in Table 2) that the authors refer to in the texts, based on other authors or on the definitions of associations with recognised work in the field. From the analysis of Table 2, it can be inferred that conceptualisation of DC is more related to the domain of digital technological tools (Alfonzo & Batson, 2014; Bell, 2021; Ince et al., 2019), namely resources for information research, such as the proper use of databases (Alfonzo & Batson, 2014; Bell, 2021), alert strategies (Ince et al., 2019) or communication resources. We infer that the definition of DC is closer to the concept of digital skills (“habilidades digitais”, in Brazilian Portuguese), as can be seen from the terms used in these articles. Two authors retain broader definitions that relate to the ability of subjects to live, study and work in a digital society.

Table 2. Main definitions of digital competence.

Article	Definition	Terms used	Authors referenced
A1	‘The ability to use information and communication technologies to find, understand, evaluate, create, and communicate digital information, an ability that requires both cognitive and technical skills.’	digital literacy skills information technology skills	American Library Association (2013)
A2	‘the effective use of digital skills and technologies rather than a prescriptive list of core abilities.’	digital literacy	Gilster (1997, cited by Lankshear & Knobel, 2008)
	‘Digital literacy is the awareness, attitude and ability of individuals to appropriately use digital tools and facilities to identify, access, manage, integrate, evaluate, analyze and synthesize digital resources […].’		Martin (2006)
	‘in a wider context, it may be defined as a skill set or a range of competencies which enable individuals to live and contribute to the digital society.’		Jisc (2016); List (2019)
A4	‘the ability to use ICT tools to locate, evaluate, use, understand and create information and the ability to effectively perform tasks in a digital environment.’ ‘the capabilities which fit someone for living, learning and working in a digital society.’	digital literacy skills	Digital Literacy Definition and Resources (2008). Joint Information Systems Committee – Jisc (2015).

IL, as indicated in Table 3, from the authors’ perspective, requires the effective use of information (Alfonzo & Batson, 2014; Han, 2012; Nierenberg & Dahl, 2021), thus involving information research, selection and evaluation, organisation and communication competences (Alfonzo & Batson, 2014; Bell, 2021; Han, 2012; Ince et al., 2019; Israel & Nsibirwa, 2018; Koler-Povh & Turk, 2020; Nierenberg & Dahl, 2021). It is mentioned that the researcher/doctoral student must know what they intend to look for in order to produce new knowledge (Han, 2012; Koler-Povh & Turk, 2020; Nierenberg & Dahl, 2021), which can contribute to solving research problems (Israel & Nsibirwa, 2018). Therefore, we conclude that the definition of IL includes all the phases of research, selection, organisation and communication of scientific information referred to by Kanitar (2014, as cited in Virkus, 2003). IL requires the mastery of DC related to the information literacy and data or communication literacy, inter alia, from the DigComp 2.2 framework, namely: “Identify, locate, filter, retrieve, store, organise, analyse, and manage digital information and data, judging its relevance and purpose” (Vuorikari et al., 2022), although this being a broader framework.

Table 3. Main definitions of information literacy (IL).

Article	Definition of IL	Terms used	Authors referenced
A1	‘A set of abilities requiring individuals to “recognise when information is needed and have the ability to locate, evaluate, and use effectively the needed information’’	Information literacy	Association of College and Research Libraries [ACRL], 2000.
A2	‘Information literacy (IL) often refers to the ability to retrieve, evaluate, process, manage and disseminate research in all formats.’	Information literacy	CILIP Information Literacy Group (2018).
A3	‘recognition of the ability of people to “make effective and ethical use of information” and to “apply information to create and communicate knowledge”’	Information literacy	Catts & Lau 2008.
A4	‘Information literacy can be defined as the ability to define a problem, seek information, locate and access sources, use information, synthesize and evaluate information’	Information literacy skills	Big6 Skills Overview, 2014.
A5	‘information literacy is the capability to identify needed information, understand organisation of information, identify appropriate information sources, locate these sources, critically evaluate the sources, and disseminate such information.’	Information literacy	University of Idaho Information Literacy Portal, 2011.
A5	‘information literacy is the capability to identify needed information, understand organisation of information, identify appropriate information sources, locate these sources, critically evaluate the sources, and disseminate such information.’	Information literacy	University of Idaho Information Literacy Portal, 2011
A6	‘IL is defined as a conglomerate of self-directed learning and reflective judgment of the ability to plan and pursue information searches and skills for evaluating the accuracy of information and its sources.’ ‘the cognitive-affective network that enables individuals to recognize their need for information and understand it, evaluate it and use it by producing new knowledge, and use it to resolve problems by making decisions’	Information literacy Information literacy	American Library Association (ALA), 2000. Pinto, 2010 and Elmborg, 2006.
A7	‘Information literacy encompasses the knowledge, skills and attitudes needed to be able to discover, evaluate and use information sources effectively and appropriately in order to answer questions, solve problems, create knowledge and learn.’	Information literacy	Nierenberg et al. (2021).

3.2. Concepts adopted for this study

Analysing the concepts of DC and IL, meeting the objectives of the ongoing doctoral project, for the development of a DILC framework include dimensions or levels of competences that suit the needs of a doctoral student in their academic career in the field of digital technologies and technological tools, which include competences related to the exploration of thesauruses, databases and aggregators, and software for the organisation and processing of information (such as Mendeley and WebQDA, which can facilitate both literature review and the analysis of qualitative data). In the domain of IL, the framework should include competences for the effective use of information that include the definition of search terms, the search itself, and the selection and use of information in order to produce new knowledge.

Given the above, in this study, for DC, we adopted the concept of the American Library Association (ALA), used by Alfonzo and Batson, who define DC as “The ability to use information and communication technologies to find, understand, evaluate, create, and communicate digital information, an ability that requires both cognitive and technical skills” (Alfonzo & Batson, 2014, p. 61, in ALA, 2013).

Regarding the definition of IL, we chose to adopt the concept of the Association of College and Research Libraries (ACRL) that reads “A set of abilities requiring individuals to recognise when information is needed and have the ability to locate, evaluate, and use effectively the needed information”, also used by (Alfonzo & Batson, 2014, pp. 61–62).

In addition to the reasons for the adoption of both concepts, DC and IL, we should add that they derive from library institutions/organisations, which figure among the other authors as the entities most dedicated to promoting doctoral students’ information literacy competences.

4. Final considerations

This article reported the process of a systematic literature review on the concepts of DC and IL, carried out with the aim of bringing together theoretical elements on the state of the art with a view to defining a reference framework for digital information literacy competences to be developed in the context of doctoral courses. It was noticed that, in order to effectively use information, doctoral students must develop a set of competences both at the technological and digital level and at the more specific level of research, selection, processing and communication of information.

In short, the definitions analysed refer to a technical approach, of know-how and keeping up with technological development via digital inclusion, capable of appropriately streamlining information research, evaluation and use. However, we conclude that it is necessary to hybridise the DigComp framework with the one developed by Kanitar (2014), in combination with other frameworks or competences related to these two, with a view to defining the DILC that doctoral students in education should develop, the subject of the ongoing doctoral project.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Funding

This work is financially supported by National Funds through FCT – Fundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologia, I.P., under the project UIDB/00194/2020.

Appendix

Table A1. List of articles analyzed.

Article	Author and year	Title	Scientificpublication	Keywords
A1	Alfonzo & Batson (2014)	Utilizing a Co-teaching model to enhance digital literacy instruction for doctoral students	International Journal of Doctoral Studies	Digital literacy, citation management, co-teaching, doctoral student learning
A2	Bell (2021)	A qualitative investigation of the digital literacy practices of doctoral students	Journal of Information Literacy	Digital literacy; digital skills; digital tools; information literacy; interviews; postgraduate research students; qualitative research; UK
A3	Han (2012)	Information literacy challenges for Chinese PhD students in Australia: A biographical study	Journal of Information Literacy	Information literacy; international HDR students; Chinese students; research education; English as a second language
A4	Ince et al. (2019)	The role of libraries in teaching doctoral students to become information-literate researchers: A review of existing practices and recommendations for the future	Information and Learning Sciences	Digital literacy, information literacy, doctoral students, graduate students, information problem solving (IPS), research workflow
A5	Israel & Nsibirwa (2018)	Information Literacy Skills in using Electronic Information Resources	Library Philosophy and Practice (e-Journal)	Information literacy, skills, electronic information resources, students
A6	Koler-Povh & Turk (2020)	Information literacy of doctoral students in engineering and the librarian’s role	Journal of Librarianship and Information Science	Engineering sciences, information literacy, librarian’s role, PhD students, Slovenia
A7	Nierenberg & Dahl (2021)	Is information literacy ability, and metacognition of that ability, related to interest, gender, or education level? A cross-sectional study of higher education students	Journal of Librarianship and Information Science	Dunning-Kruger effect, higher education, information literacy, interest, metacognition, testing