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Do Wikipedia citations mirror scholarly impact?; co-star networks in silent films

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By Daniel Mietchen, Guillaume Paumier, Piotr Konieczny, and Tilman Bayer

A monthly overview of recent academic research about Wikipedia and other Wikimedia projects, also published as the Wikimedia Research Newsletter.

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  • For scientific papers, Wikipedia citations are inherently a very poor metric for impact. For medical articles in particular, our citation policy (WP:MEDRS) specifically discourages citing primary research studies, which make up the great bulk of the literature; instead we favor the use of secondary review articles. The same principle applies, less explicitly, to other areas of science. So there is a very strong bias in which articles we use that has nothing to do with impact. Looie496 (talk) 12:58, 29 November 2015 (UTC)[reply]
  • Many non-science articles are hard to source from academic papers, and books are often the only source, certainly pre-1900. Academic books are a good source, often better than papers or their equivalent as they provide an overview of the contemporary understanding of the topic, rather than advancing one particular hypothesis. All the best: Rich Farmbrough, 17:00, 30 November 2015 (UTC).[reply]
I'll put it more succinctly than Rich: don't expect your stuff to show up on Wikipedia if it's behind a paywall.--Wehwalt (talk) 16:33, 3 December 2015 (UTC)[reply]


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source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Signpost/2015-11-25/Recent_research