Beyond the metrics: What do Wikipedia citations mean?

Abstract

Recent studies have demonstrated that Wikipedia citations to scholarly articles may be correlated with higher citation rates in the scholarly literature. It is also the case that Wikipedia serves a key role in the dissemination of public knowledge. Wikipedia has supplanted most encyclopedias as a general knowledge source and is one of the ten-most visited web properties in the world. With this in mind some publishers have made a deliberate effort to contribute reliable, peer reviewed information from their venues to Wikipedia. In far many more cases, volunteer editors cite scholarly articles as needed when creating or improving Wikipedia entries. In this study, we examine citations to an interdisciplinary collection of mostly open access journals published in collaboration with an academic library. We measure the citation rate for these articles prior to and after Wikipedia citation. In addition to quantifying the prevalence of Wikipedia citations to these titles, we identify how these citations are used in Wikipedia. By completing a content analysis of these citations, we identify “impact” beyond a count of mentions. These results contribute toward a better understanding of the value of a Wikipedia citation.