Do I understand this correctly? That Wikipedia articles that cite academic publications will be included in citation count now (at least for altmetrics). While that’s great recognition for Wikipedia as a corpus of scholarly work, does that mean Wikipedia will be overrun with academic authors adding citations to their academic papers in any Wikipedia article they can get away with in order to improve their citation counts for their CVs?

I note that generally we can spot self-citation because the two papers will have an author name in common, but with the ability to edit Wikipedia anonymously and pseudonymously means that we cannot spot self-citation.

While judging research purely on citation counts is a deeply flawed method of assessment, nonetheless it is a reality and the pressure on folks to “game” the system is tremendous given the role it can play in appointment, tenure, promotion and grant applications.

On the positive side, we might be able to get rid of a lot of citation-needed tags.

Kerry

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From: wiki-research-l-bounces@lists.wikimedia.org [mailto:wiki-research-l-bounces@lists.wikimedia.org] On Behalf Of Pine W
Sent: Friday, 6 February 2015 8:13 AM
To: Wiki Research-l; Raymond Leonard; Wikimedia & GLAM collaboration [Public]; North American Cultural Partnerships
Subject: [Wiki-research-l] Altmetric.com now tracks Wikipedia citations

FYI:

http://www.altmetric.com/blog/new-source-alert-wikipedia/

Pine

This is an Encyclopedia
One gateway to the wide garden of knowledge, where lies
The deep rock of our past, in which we must delve
The well of our future,
The clear water we must leave untainted for those who come after us,
The fertile earth, in which truth may grow in bright places, tended by many hands,
And the broad fall of sunshine, warming our first steps toward knowing how much we do not know.
—Catherine Munro