Wikipedia:Academic use
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This essay contains the advice or opinions of one or more Wikipedia contributors. Essays may represent widespread norms or minority viewpoints. Consider these views with discretion. |
Wikipedia is increasingly used by people in the academic community, from first-year students to professors, as an easily accessible tertiary source for information about anything and everything. However, citation of Wikipedia in research papers may not be considered acceptable, because Wikipedia is not considered a creditable source.[1][2]
Follow two simple rules:
[edit] Do your research properly. Remember that any encyclopedia is a starting point for research, not an ending point
- An encyclopedia is great for getting a general understanding of a subject before you dive into it. But then you 'do' have to dive into your subject; using books and articles and other appropriate sources will provide better research. Research from these sources will be more detailed, more precise, more carefully reasoned, and (in most cases) more broadly peer reviewed than the summary you found in an encyclopedia. These will be the sources you cite in your paper. There is no need to cite Wikipedia in this case.
- An encyclopedia is great for checking general knowledge that you have forgotten, like the starting date of the First World War or the boiling point of mercury. Citation is not needed for fact checking general knowledge.
- Slightly obscure details, such as the population of Ghana, can be found on Wikipedia, but it is best to verify the information using an authoritative source, such as the CIA World Factbook.
- A very obscure detail, such as the names of the founders of the Social Democrat Hunchakian Party, might be very hard to find without the aid of an encyclopedia like Wikipedia. Wikipedia is ideal in these situations because it will allow you to find the information, as well as sources which you can research to confirm that information. In any case, you should not cite Wikipedia, but the source provided; you should of course look up the source yourself before citing it. If there is no source cited, consider a different method of obtaining this information.
[edit] Use your judgment. Remember that all sources have to be evaluated.
- Wikipedia is not a replacement for a reading assignment by your professor.
- If a book is in your university library or published by a reputable university press, or if an article is in a standard academic journal, that means that several professors at some point have considered the information and considered it worthy to publish. Be careful not to use sources that are too old, however, as some methods and conclusions might be out of date.
- Sourcing a website is a game of chance. Unless you know that the site is run by a respected institution, or if you have verified the sources the site uses, it is probably a bad idea to cite it.
- While reading Wikipedia articles for research, remember to consider the information carefully, and never treat what is on Wikipedia as wholesale truth.
It is the goal of Wikipedia to become a research aid that all students can trust. If you, in the course of your research, find that there is misinformation on Wikipedia, look over the basic guidelines of Wikipedia and especially what the community considers a reliable source and please consider editing the article (and even creating an account) with what you have learned. This is a part of how Wikipedia wishes to attain its goals.
[edit] Wikipedia links to many credible sources
Even though Wikipedia articles can be easily tampered to thwart credibility, the references in an article usually link to credible sources. The driving forces that cause so many Wikipedia articles to link to highly credible sources are the content policies, such as WP:VERIFY and WP:SOURCES, plus the actions of reviewers who constantly remove unreliable sources from articles. For those reasons, the sources cited by a Wikipedia article tend to be more accurate, direct references than many webpages found by Web search engines.
