GearFire, an weblog for “academic success” has a useful post on how to unleash the power of the Wikipedia without citing it in your paper: Nothing that I haven’t preached about in class, but nicely brought to the point from a different perspective. GearFire is a multi-author blog; the entry I am referring to here is by Rebecca, an American PhD student, who, incidentally, wants to “live and work in Europe.” Here’s the gist of her argument:
“You should NEVER cite Wikipedia in an academic paper. Your teacher will think you are at best lazy and at worst an idiot if you do. But that doesn’t mean that Wikipedia is useless; far from it. Here are 4 ways to use Wikipedia to write better papers without needing to cite it at all.”
Here is what you can use it for:
- Background Information
- Links (connections to related areas of interest)
- Keywords (search terms)
- References (which every self-respecting Wikipedia entry should have)
I could not agree more with this assessment. Wikipedia is invaluable if used right; just don’t cite it—unless of course you are writing a paper about Wikipedia itself. It is always necessary to digg deeper in an academic paper (or a presentation) and to go beyond what a tertiary source can offer.
Read the whole post by Rebecca.
