“Why Wikipedia + Open Access = Revolution”
“Many of the world’s highest quality and highest impact journals sit behind expensive paywalls that prevent all but the most privileged and well-resourced from gaining access. So it wouldn’t be at all surprising if Wikipedia editors tended to ignore these high quality papers in favor of articles that were easier to access.
That raises an important question. Do Wikipedia entries really reflect the best scientific evidence available?
Today we get an answer thanks to the work of Misha Teplitskiy and pals at the University of Chicago who have worked out what constitutes an important paper in the world of science and then checked to see whether this is reflected in the references that appear in Wikipedia entries…
The results make for interesting reading. “The odds that an open access journal is referenced on the English Wikipedia are 47% higher compared to closed access journals,” say Teplitskiy and co…
But this doesn’t imply that Wikipedia editors are blindly choosing open access articles at the expense of more important papers. The team says that a journal’s high impact status also significantly increases the chances that it will be referenced, regardless of whether it is open or closed access…
“Our research suggests that open access policies have a tremendous impact on the diffusion of science to the broader general public through an intermediary like Wikipedia,” says Teplitskiy and co.”
Related: Yahoo Answers is not Research
