WISSENSCHAFT IN WIKIPEDIA UND ANDEREN WIKIMEDIA-PROJEKTEN
A52-2, Insitut für Technologiefolgenabschätzung, Österreichische Akademie der Wissenschaften, (May 2009)Abstract
In this report we examine the potentialof Wikipedia, Wikibooks and Wikiversity
for academic communication. Firstly, weintroduce the pioneer project
Wikipedia and the following projects bythe Wikimedia Foundation by outlining
their historical development and basicfunctional principles. Secondly, we
focus on the scholarly use of thedifferent platforms. Starting with Wikipedia
and followed by Wikibooks andWikiversity, we analyze each project regarding
its peculiarities that contrast it fromthe others, its size and range, its
academic content, its authors, and theway it is used for teaching, collaboration
and research.
We found that in all examined projectsacademic engagement is presented
through scholarly content itself and throughthe related communicative processes
such as teaching and partlycollaboration and research. However, there
are significant differences in the wayand the range this engagement appears.
Therefore, the results show two sides:On the one hand, Wikipedia has enormous
public and growing academic relevance.Additionally the encyclopaedia
depends on many areas of knowledge withscientific expertise in order to
be qualitatively satisfying. This leadsto a kind of “forced marriage” between
Wikipedia and academia. On the otherhand, Wikibooks and Wikiversity seem
to be less successful compared to theirsister project, which is why there are
only weak connections between academiaand these platforms so far. In all
cases the social and technologicaldynamics of the projects make it difficult,
if not impossible, to estimate theirlong-time future influence on scholarly
communication. Therefore we suggestcontinuing to observe them from this
perspective.