Wikimedia and universities: contributing to the global commons in the Age of Disinformation

Abstract

In its first 30 years the world wide web has revolutionized the information environment. However, its impact has been negative as well as positive, through corporate misuse of personal data and due to its potential for enabling the spread of disinformation. As a large-scale collaborative platform funded through charitable donations, with a mission to provide universal free access to knowledge as a public good, Wikipedia is one of the most popular websites in the world. This paper explores the role of Wikipedia in the information ecosystem where it occupies a unique role as a bridge between informal discussion and scholarly publication. We explore how it relates to the broader Wikimedia ecosystem, through structured data on Wikidata for instance, and openly licensed media on Wikimedia Commons. We consider the potential benefits for universities in the areas of information literacy and research impact, and investigate the extent to which universities in the UK and their libraries are engaging strategically with Wikimedia, if at all.

Exploring open access coverage of Wikipedia-cited research across the White Rose Universities

“…Taking all of this together, we can conclude that fewer than half of research articles cited on Wikipedia are currently linked to openly accessible records. Given Wikipedia's unique role in the information ecosystem as a bridge between informal discussion and scholarly publication, 30 this is of concern. For example, during the Covid-19 pandemic, the WHO partnered with the Wikimedia Foundation to expand public access to current and reliable information about the virus, 31 while at the start of the Covid-19 pandemic many publishers temporarily made all research on the virus freely available.…”

Forging the medieval on Wikipedia

“…We believe that Wikipedia's problems, as outlined above, intensify the need for medievalists to engage as critics, editors, and teachers. For over a decade, scholars have advocated for the careful use of Wikipedia (Mueller 2010;Carver et al 2012;Ford and Geiger 2012;Sheppard 2019), identifying its potential as a space for sharing knowledge as much as addressing harmful medieval myths (Utz 2019) (Kim 2014a), and such metaphors are engaging starting points for addressing spaces and theories of knowledge-creation.…”