I agree that we could be doing something interesting with the social dynamics of Wikipedia editing by releasing this dataset -- and that some new problems may result. However, I think that it's much better to have too much academic interest than not enough. With a little AGF and diligence, we ought to be able to deal with this problem like we've dealt with quality control concerns in the past. Academics have to be very careful about their reputation, and it's hard to cite your own unnecessarily without giving up who you are since your name's going to be on the paper.
Either way, this is a useful dataset for library sciences work and it's public anyway. We're just making it easier to work with. Honestly, that's how I got started working in this space -- helping someone get data for their own research.
-Aaron
On Fri, Feb 6, 2015 at 5:50 AM, mjn mjn@anadrome.org wrote:
I agree it's not a new worry, but it might change the nature of the problem a bit, and is worth at least being vigilant about. I did have a similar idea some years ago, to compute an "impact factor" for being-cited-on-Wikipedia, but after discussing it with some colleagues, didn't do so specifically because of the worry that it would encourage more gaming of Wikipedia citations. Of course it's inevitable that someone would eventually do it, but I still think it was probably right on balance to not push that date forward.
Regarding the SEO analogy, the external links on Wikipedia are on average not the best part of Wikipedia, so it's not a very heartening The citations for now are not nearly as spammy as the external links are, and I hope it stays that way!
It's of course not new that there is an incentive to spam citations. Even without explicit Wikipedia-citation-tracking, there are incentives to spam marginally relevant citations in order to increase perceived prominence. Maybe being in a Wikipedia article will get your paper in front of more grad students who will end up citing it "for real" after encountering it on Wikipedia, etc. A direct citation count feels like it's likely to exacerbate that, since now removing an irrelevant citation to someone's article is a direct attack on their metrics! Though it's possible the actual effect on editing patterns will be small.
From a research perspective, the new datasets of citations might be interesting to track over time, and correlate back to editors, to see if there are any interesting (or "interesting") patterns.
-Mark
-- mjn | http://www.anadrome.org
Oliver Keyes ironholds@gmail.com writes:
And SEO spammers will add themselves, too! This is not a new problem.
On Thursday, 5 February 2015, Kerry Raymond kerry.raymond@gmail.com
wrote:
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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*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/
PineThis is an Encyclopedia https://www.wikipedia.org/
- 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 *
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