The Trust and Authority in Scholarly Communications in the Light ofthe Digital Transition research project1) was a study which investigatedthe behaviours and attitudes of academic researchers as producers andconsumers of scholarly information resources in respect to how theydetermine authority and trustworthiness. The research questions for thestudy arose out of CIBER’s studies of the virtual scholar. This paperfocuses on elements of this study, mainly an analysis of a scholarlypublisher’s usage logs, which was undertaken at the start of the projectin order to build an evidence base, which would help calibrate the mainmethodological tools used by the project: interviews and questionnaire. The specific purpose of the log study was to identify and assess thedigital usage behaviours that potentially raise trustworthiness and authorityquestions. Results from the self-report part of the study were additionallyused to explain the logs. The main findings were that: 1) logs providea good indicator of use and information seeking behaviour, albeit inrespect to just a part of the information seeking journey; 2) the ‘lite’form of information seeking behaviour observed in the logs is a sign ofusers trying to make their mind up in the face of a tsunami of informationas to what is relevant and to be trusted; 3) Google and Google Scholarare the discovery platforms of choice for academic researchers, whichpartly points to the fact that they are influenced in what they use andread by ease of access; 4) usage is not a suitable proxy for quality. The paper also provides contextual data from CIBER’s previous studies.