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Libraries and Learning
Technologies
LALT 1020: Introduction to Information Literacy and
Research Skills (Online)
Module 2-Video 3: Using Wikipedia for Academic ResearchTranscript
Hello and welcome back!
In this video, we will be talking about another open access tool that you can use for academic
research, but selectively.
We’ll be discussing Wikipedia and what you can and cannot do with it for academic work.
Wikipedia is a type of wiki… or a knowledge base website that is developed collaboratively by a
community of users, allowing any user to add and edit content.
It’s also an online encyclopedia, hence the term wiki-pedia. A traditional print-based
encyclopedia is a sort of fact book that lists all the knowledge of the world by topic.
Wikipedia is the digital version of this, but the difference is that it can be edited online by many
people. Traditional print encyclopedias were always fact-checked by experts before they were
printed for the public.
That is not always the case with Wikipedia. These books also cost money, while Wikipedia is a
free and open access tool for research.
When Wikipedia was first founded in 1995, the CEO, Jimmy Wales, famously stated that the
purpose of the platform is to offer free knowledge to everyone on the planet.
However, at the same time, he also put a set of guiding rules and policies in place for its usage,
including some editing restrictions.
Given its reputation for online editing, you may have heard that Wikipedia is not the best tool to
use for academic research. However, there are many misconceptions about Wikipedia,
including what you can and cannot do with it for academic work.
Let’s address some of these misconceptions now…
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Misconception #1: Anyone can edit Wikipedia.
That is not entirely true. Some pages hold what they call “protected status”. This means that
only authorized Wikipedia editors who are academic experts (or scholars) in the subject area
can edit and update the page.
Protected pages tend to be those that focus on important people, such as famous scientists, or
political leaders, or on big events in world history, which all have a large volume of viewers and
readers.
Pages like this are restricted from anyone in the public editing them, so that bias and
misinformation on the topic cannot be spread to a wider audience.
Misconception #2: Wikipedia pages all contain false information.
Again, this is not 100% true. It really depends on the overall quality of the page, and in
particular, the quality of its sources.
In the next video, we’ll show you some examples for how to carefully examine the content of
each Wikipedia page to make sure you can trust the information on it.
Copyright © 2023. The American University in Cairo. All Rights Reserved.