Journal of the Korean Society for Library and Information Science
- P-ISSN1225-598X
- E-ISSN2982-6292
Analysis of Wikipedia Citations in Peer-Reviewed Journal Articles
Abstract
Wikipedia represents a revolutionary experiment in the sense that it allows anonymous Internet users to contribute, change, and edit Encyclopedia contents used by tens of millions of people. While a very popular information source on the Internet, because of its questionable information credibility and accuracy, citing Wikipedia articles is being regarded as a risky behavior for scholars. The present study identified 282 scholarly articles from Thomson Reuters’ Web of Science citation database that cite Wikipedia at least once. Out of the millions of articles indexed in Web of Science, the proportion of articles citing Wikipedia is extremely small. On the other hand, the numbers are showing a marked increase since 2011. Wikipedia citing articles are distributed in subject areas, such as library and information science, business, psychology, education, and communication more often than in other areas. The distribution of a total of 577 citations from 267 articles for which we were able to obtain full texts shows that Wikipedia is being cited mainly in studies of Wikipedia (139 citations, 24.1%) or as a ready reference source (331 citations, 57.4%). At the same time, about 15% of total citations turned out to be cases of potentially risky behaviors in which Wikipedia is being cited as a crucial basis or data source for study.
- keywords
- 위키피디아, 인용, 백과사전, 참고정보원, Wikipedia, Citation, Encyclopedia, Reference Source, Web of Science®
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