Hi,
I am currently working on an update of a report dealing with the
relation between Wikimedia and academia (see the English abstract below
if you are interested), which will appear in the upcoming book
"Cyberscience 2.0" by Michael Nentwich and me.
For this purpose I have 2 questions:
1. Is anybody aware of examples for academic canonization by using
Wikipedia (or other Wikimedia projects)? My hypothesis is that Wikipedia
could be potentially used for this purpose, namely when many relevant
researchers discuss a certain article and eventually come to new
conclusions, definitions etc.
2. Do you know empirical studies dealing with the academic usage of
Wikibooks and Wikiversity (especially for research)? There seems to be
lack of concrete empirical studies of these platforms from this perspective.
Help is appreciated.
Best,
René
Report (German):
König, R., Nentwich, M. (2009): Wissenschaft in Wikipedia und anderen
Wikimedia-Projekten. Steckbrief II im Rahmen des Projekts Interactive
Science. Institut für Technikfolgen-Abschätzung, Wien.
http://epub.oeaw.ac.at/ita/ita-projektberichte/d2-2a52-2.pdf
English abstract:
In this report we examine the potential of Wikipedia, Wikibooks and Wiki-
versity for academic communication. Firstly, we introduce the pioneer
project
Wikipedia and the following projects by the Wikimedia Foundation by outlin-
ing their historical development and basic functional principles.
Secondly, we
focus on the scholarly use of the different platforms. Starting with
Wikipedia
and followed by Wikibooks and Wikiversity, we analyze each project re-
garding its peculiarities that contrast it from the others, its size and
range, its
academic content, its authors, and the way it is used for teaching,
collabora-
tion and research.
We found that in all examined projects academic engagement is presented
through scholarly content itself and through the related communicative proc-
esses such as teaching and partly collaboration and research. However,
there
are significant differences in the way and the range this engagement
appears.
Therefore, the results show two sides: On the one hand, Wikipedia has enor-
mous public and growing academic relevance. Additionally the encyclopae-
dia depends on many areas of knowledge with scientific expertise in
order to
be qualitatively satisfying. This leads to a kind of „forced marriage”
between
Wikipedia and academia. On the other hand, Wikibooks and Wikiversity seem
to be less successful compared to their sister project, which is why
there are
only weak connections between academia and these platforms so far. In all
cases the social and technological dynamics of the projects make it
difficult,
if not impossible, to estimate their long-time future influence on
scholarly
communication. Therefore we suggest continuing to observe them from this
perspective.
--
Dipl.-Soz. René König
Karlsruher Institut für Technologie
Institut für Technikfolgenabschätzung und Sytemanalyse (ITAS)
Postfach 3640
D-76021 Karlsruhe
Tel.: +49 (0) 721 / 608-22665
Web/Skype: renekoenig.eu
Twitter: R_Koenig