Often thought of as ‘the last good place on the internet’, Wikipedia plays a key role in the online information ecosystem by linking its entries to current and historic research papers. But, after following these links, how much of this res…
Category: Wikipedia
Seeing the world like Wikipedia – What you should know about how the world’s largest encyclopedia works.
Wikipedia has become focal point in the way in which information is accessed and communicated within modern societies. In this post, Zachary J. McDowell and Matthew A. Vetter discuss the principles that have enabled Wikipedia to assume this position an…
A step-by-step guide for using Wikipedia for research communication
The Wikipedia community has become a source of information for a broad and global public. Paul Börsting and Maximilian Heimstädt argue that contributing to the encyclopedia as a scholar can be a powerful way of achieving a strong societal impact of the…
Open Access Directory – A resource for making sense of the open access landscape
The Open Access Directory (OAD) is a wiki of factual lists on the subject of open access. Designed to make sense out of the chaos of different information about open access, in this post Nancy Pontika recounts why the OAD was created and outlines how it forms an important knowledge base for anyone seeking to … Continued
We have the technology to save peer review – now it is up to our communities to implement it
Today marks the beginning of Peer Review Week 2017. Here on the Impact Blog, we’ll be featuring posts covering a variety of perspectives on and issues relating to peer review, and which also consider this year’s theme of “Transparency”. To kick things off, Jon Tennant, Daniel Graziotin and Sarah Kearns consider what can be done to address the various shortcomings […]
Wikipedia is significantly amplifying the impact of Open Access publications.
When you edit Wikipedia to include a claim, you are required to substantiate that edit by referencing a reliable source. According to a recent study, the single biggest predictor of a journal’s appearance in Wikipedia is its impact factor. One of the exciting findings, writes Eamon Duede, is that it appears Wikipedia editors are putting a premium on open access content. […]
What is an Information Scientist and What is Information Science?
Over the years I have been asked what I do and what my profession does in general. I know what I do, but I’m better at writing than speaking, and I often stumble over my words. The other day I found these definitions, thanks to the State of North Carolina’s Division of Employment Security job […]
Towards ‘Health Information for All’: Medical content on Wikipedia received 6.5 billion page views in 2013.
The medical content in Wikipedia receives substantial online traffic, links to a great body of academic scholarship and presents a massive opportunity for health care information. James Heilman and Andrew West present their findings on the wider editorial landscape looking to improving the quality and impact of medical content on the web. Data points to the enormous potential of these efforts, and further analysis will […]
Academic opinions of Wikipedia and open access will improve with more active involvement.
Lu Xiao provides a summary of her research on academic perceptions of Wikipedia and open access publishing. Survey results showed that researchers’ lack of experiences with Wikipedia and/or open access journals negatively affected their perceptions of the open access publishing model. Compared to tenure-track faculty members, instructors and ‘Other’ academic professionals are more likely to believe that academic publishing in […]
Creating an efficient workflow for publishing scholarly papers on Wikipedia.
The global scope and popularity of Wikipedia make it an ideal medium for researchers to share expertise. But it has been difficult to find an efficient way to link accessible scholarly work into the edits. Martin Poulter describes how the journal PLOS Computational Biology has tackled this issue by inviting submissions of review papers on a specific topic or research technique that has no article, […]