wikipedia academic thesis

While Sandel argues that pursuing perfection through genetic engineering would decrease our sense of humility, he claims that the sense of solidarity we would lose is also important.

This thesis summarizes several points in Sandel’s argument, but it does not make a claim about how we should understand his argument. A reader who read Sandel’s argument would not also need to read an essay based on this descriptive thesis.  

Broad thesis (arguable, but difficult to support with evidence) 

Michael Sandel’s arguments about genetic engineering do not take into consideration all the relevant issues.

This is an arguable claim because it would be possible to argue against it by saying that Michael Sandel’s arguments do take all of the relevant issues into consideration. But the claim is too broad. Because the thesis does not specify which “issues” it is focused on—or why it matters if they are considered—readers won’t know what the rest of the essay will argue, and the writer won’t know what to focus on. If there is a particular issue that Sandel does not address, then a more specific version of the thesis would include that issue—hand an explanation of why it is important.  

Arguable thesis with analytical claim 

While Sandel argues persuasively that our instinct to “remake” (54) ourselves into something ever more perfect is a problem, his belief that we can always draw a line between what is medically necessary and what makes us simply “better than well” (51) is less convincing.

This is an arguable analytical claim. To argue for this claim, the essay writer will need to show how evidence from the article itself points to this interpretation. It’s also a reasonable scope for a thesis because it can be supported with evidence available in the text and is neither too broad nor too narrow.  

Arguable thesis with normative claim 

Given Sandel’s argument against genetic enhancement, we should not allow parents to decide on using Human Growth Hormone for their children.

This thesis tells us what we should do about a particular issue discussed in Sandel’s article, but it does not tell us how we should understand Sandel’s argument.  

Questions to ask about your thesis 

• Is the thesis truly arguable? Does it speak to a genuine dilemma in the source, or would most readers automatically agree with it?  
• Is the thesis too obvious? Again, would most or all readers agree with it without needing to see your argument?  
• Is the thesis complex enough to require a whole essay's worth of argument?  
• Is the thesis supportable with evidence from the text rather than with generalizations or outside research?  
• Would anyone want to read a paper in which this thesis was developed? That is, can you explain what this paper is adding to our understanding of a problem, question, or topic?
• picture_as_pdf Thesis

Twenty years of Wikipedia in scholarly publications: a bibliometric network analysis of the thematic and citation landscape

• Published: 14 February 2023
• Volume 57 , pages 5623–5653, ( 2023 )

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• Mohamed M. Mostafa 1  

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Wikipedia has grown to be the biggest online encyclopedia in terms of comprehensiveness, reach and coverage. However, although different websites and social network platforms have received considerable academic attention, Wikipedia has largely gone unnoticed. In this study, we fill this research gap by investigating how Wikipedia is used in scholarly publications since its launch in 2001. More specifically, we review and analyze the intellectual structure of Wikipedia’s scholarly publications based on 3790 Web of Science core collection documents written by 10,636 authors from 100 countries over two decades (2001–2021). Results show that the most influential outlets publishing Wikipedia research include journals such as Plos one, Nucleic Acids Research, the Journal of the Association for Information Science and Technology, the Journal of the American Society for Information Science and Technology, IEEE Access, and Information Processing and Management . Results also show that the author collaboration network is very sparsely connected, indicating the absence of close collaboration among the authors in the field. Furthermore, results reveal that the Wikipedia research institutions’ collaboration network reflects a North–South divide as very limited cooperation occurs between developed and developing countries’ institutions. Finally, the multiple correspondence analysis applied to obtain the Wikipedia research conceptual map reveals the breadth, diversity, and intellectual thrust of the Wikipedia’s scholarly publications. Our analysis has far-reaching implications for aspiring researchers interested in Wikipedia research as we retrospectively trace the evolution in research output over the last two decades, establish linkages between the authors and articles, and reveal trending topics/hotspots within the broad theme of Wikipedia research.

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Mostafa, M.M. Twenty years of Wikipedia in scholarly publications: a bibliometric network analysis of the thematic and citation landscape. Qual Quant 57 , 5623–5653 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11135-023-01626-7

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The purpose of this paper is to engage in a thought experiment, exploring the use of Wikipedia or similar content‐malleable systems for the review and dissemination of academic knowledge.

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By looking at other sources, the paper considers the current state of the academic peer‐review process, discusses Wikipedia and reflects on dynamic content creation and management applications currently in use in academia.

The traditional peer review process must be updated to match the rapid creation and diffusion of knowledge that characterises the 21st century. The Wikipedia concept is a potential model for more rapid and reliable dissemination of scholarly knowledge. The implications of such a concept would have a dramatic effect on the academic community.

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Wikipedia: Why is the common knowledge resource still neglected by academics?

Dariusz jemielniak.

Kozminski University, Management in Networked and Digital Societies (MINDS) department, Jagiellonska 59, 03301 Warszawa, Poland

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Wikipedia is by far the largest online encyclopedia, and the number of errors it contains is on par with the professional sources even in specialized topics such as biology or medicine. Yet, the academic world is still treating it with great skepticism because of the types of inaccuracies present there, the widespread plagiarism from Wikipedia, and historic biases, as well as jealousy regarding the loss of the knowledge dissemination monopoly. This article argues that it is high time not only to acknowledge Wikipedia's quality but also to start actively promoting its use and development in academia.

In 2005, Nature published a study describing Wikipedia as going “head to head” with Britannica [ 1 ]. While the claim was disputed by Britannica, since then Wikipedia has grown 6-fold in the number of articles; is >85 times the size of 120-volume Encyclopedia Britannica , measured by word count; and has substantially improved its quality.

Admittedly, standards of quality are shaped by peer-to-peer local language communities and vary widely among Wikipedia projects, and also between articles within languages [ 2 ]. Yet, the quality of Wikipedia articles is very high [ 3 ]. This is true even in many specialized topics, such as anatomy, biology, or medicine, where Wikipedia is as accurate as the professional sources [ 4–6 ], even though sometimes it does not score high on readability.

Yet, Wikipedia is still treated with suspicion by the professoriate and sneered at in academic circles [ 7 ]. This is especially disturbing, as academics are best positioned to shape Wikipedia [ 8 ], because of their expertise, as well as because of their access to students, who can improve Wikipedia for coursework under their supervision. Thus, it may be worthwhile to consider the reasons for scholars’ reluctance to openly use, recommend, and incorporate Wikipedia into coursework.

Some of the reasons for these reservations may be legitimate. Although Wikipedia has a similar number of errors to professional and peer-reviewed sources [ 4–6 ], the types of inaccuracies on Wikipedia are different. They may involve replacing the content of an article with nonsense, or someone's name with a slur. There is no question that such vandalism damages the perception of the quality of Wikipedia as a whole. Still, Wikipedia takes vandalism seriously and constantly develops new methods of combating malicious edits, including, e.g., machine learning algorithms, as well as human patrolling. The sorts of vandalism that pass through may misinform the readers but are overall quite rare, especially in popular articles. More importantly, most vandalism is easily spotted and as such is harmful mainly to the image of Wikipedia as a trustworthy source, and does not actually misinform the readers.

Another reason for academia's dislike of Wikipedia may be its association with plagiarism. Students are notorious for copying from Wikipedia. However, this is clearly an unfortunate testimony to its quality and should not be held against Wikipedia, just as it should not be held against any other plagiarized academic resource. On a side note, Wikipedia has iron-clad copyright policies and treats plagiarism more seriously than regular media.

Some other reasons may be related to a historic bias, a perception of Wikipedia as not rigorous enough, or underestimation of the ability of amateurs to disseminate knowledge in a robust way. As scholars, we should be able to confront and eliminate such biases once we are presented with evidence, and many studies show that Wikipedia delivers high-quality output in practice, even if in theory it may seem impossible. Wikipedia simply is a living testament to Linus's Law: “given enough eyeballs, all bugs are shallow,” and the more edited articles are actually more accurate. It may be surprising and strange, but the results speak for themselves. Over time Wikipedia's quality has improved substantially, and yet it is still perceived in a static and dated way, as from the time of its inception.

Some professors dislike it when students cite Wikipedia. While no encyclopedia should be the only source in academic-level essays, it should be emphasized that our primary duty is to report and accurately refer to all sources that were actually used, with no exceptions. Academic honesty and transparency are crucial for scholarly work, and it is difficult to understand why citing specifically Wikipedia is taboo.

Yet, the most important reason for animosity towards Wikipedia may be that it challenges the existing institutional hierarchy of knowledge distribution and is much more successful in reaching the public than academic publications. We, the professors, were the only ones legitimized to disseminate academic knowledge. Now, we have to compete with a product of anonymous amateurs, which has a readership much wider than any of us could ever dream of. In fact, Wikipedia systematically compensates for the lack of credentials by heavy emphasis on reliable sources. It is a paradox: Wikipedia is one of the 10 most popular websites in the world according to TopSites, and by most measures it is the most widely read knowledge repository on Earth, but still it is often treated as not worth academic attention.

We need to change this. Writing a Wikipedia article is a perfect academic assignment for students. It requires finding reliable, verifiable sources, synthesizing their content, writing an encyclopedic entry: a true paragon of scholarly effort and transferable information literacy skills. Moreover, it makes the professor's life so much easier because a new article is often checked for plagiarism and commented on by members of the community. However, I believe there are even more important reasons for students and scholars to appreciate Wikipedia. Billions of people do not have access to free knowledge. We are the 1% in terms of knowledge access privilege; developing Wikipedia, the common good of humanity, is our moral obligation. The fact that Wikipedia development makes our coursework easier is only a nice bonus.

Conclusions

There are already initiatives in computational biology or genetics aimed at developing Wikipedia articles from these topics by scholars [ 9 ]. GeneWiki project, established to transfer information about relationships and functions of all human genes from scientific resources to Wikipedia, already contains 10,000 distinct gene pages, viewed >50 million times per year [ 10 ]. Nevertheless, Wikipedia development is not yet routinely considered as valuable in tenure reviews, and Wikipedia article writing is not yet a mainstream coursework assignment in colleges. It is high time to make that happen. In 2019 Wikipedia turned 18, so maybe academics should start treating it as an adult.

Competing interests

The author is a member of the Wikimedia Foundation Board of Trustees.

Author's information

D.J. is Professor and Head of the Management in Networked and Digital Societies (MINDS) department at Kozminski University, associate faculty at Berkman-Klein Center for Internet and Society at Harvard University, and fellow at MIT Center for Collective Intelligence. He serves on the Wikimedia Foundation Board of Trustees. In 2014 he published Common Knowledge? An Ethnography of Wikipedia (Stanford University Press).

Working on this article was possible thanks to grant No. PPN/BEK/2018/1/00009 from the Polish National Agency for Academic Exchange.

Supplementary Material

Giz139_giga-d-19-00332_original_submission, giz139_giga-d-19-00332_revision_1, giz139_response_to_reviewer_comments_original_submission, giz139_reviewer_1_report_original_submission.

Thomas Shafee -- 10/18/2019 Reviewed

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