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.