An interesting union: Wikipedia + journal articles

Scientists and researchers who still haven’t considered Wikipedia to be relevant for their academic career or who perhaps disregard Wikipedia for scientific purposes all together, might have to reconsider their point of view. At least they will have to get used to the fact that social media is sneaking its way into the other-wise so stable and non-surprising world of peer-reviewed journals.

The Open Access journal PLoS have taken on the task of making science available for everyone to read. In their endeavor to achieve this they have now gone to a new level, and are trying out the combination: peer-reviewed articles + Wikipedia. By mixing the two together, PLoS hopes to meet a new level of interaction between publishers, researchers and the public.

The guinea pig for this experiment is the journal PLoS Computational Biology.

By introducing so-called “Topic Pages”, which are a new article type building on the style of a Wikipedia article, PLoS makes peer-reviewed articles which are published in PLoS Computational Biology available on Wikipedia. The benefits of these Wikipedia style articles are 1) that they will help fill a gap in Wikipedia’s computational biology content; and 2) that the articles will be subject to ongoing review of wikipedians.

A third advantage, highlighted by Bonnie Swoger in a blog post in Scientific American, is that it may play an important role in convincing scientists to take an active role in adding content to Wikipedia, and in using social media for science communication in general. Bonnie Swoger points out that due to the organisation of universities and other research institutions, using time editing Wikipedia, being on Twitter etc. means less time for lab work, field work and scholarly writing. All of which is what matters in an academic career. Scientists therefor refrain from social media (or at least use it as an excuse). The trick of PLoS’ Topics Pages, which turns peer-reviewed articles into Wikipedia entries, makes it possible for researchers not only to produce original published articles, but also to contribute to public knowledge available on Wikipedia, and thereby potentially reaching much wider audiences.

It will be interesting to see how this new concept works out. I could definitely see it as something useful also in public health related research, which due to its public nature is probably even more likely to be found via Wikipedia than topics within computational biology are.

For an example of Topic Pages take a look at the article Circular permutation in protein in the Wikipedia format and the same article in a regular journal format. Both were published in Wikipedia and PLoS Computational Biology at the end of March this year.

Read more about PLoS reflections on the Journal-Wikipedia alliance in this editorial.

Scientific journal publisher encourages the use of social media to reach your audience

So, your article has been accepted and is now published in a peer-reviewed journal. Great! Now the world gets to know of all your findings and hard work. Or will it? What if no one reads it? You can of course let your colleagues know that your article is out, have the communication department do a press release and things like that. But why not go wider than that? Why not share it with online social networks?

That sharing articles on social media can boost the number of downloads, Melissa Terras, whom I blogged about earlier, is a good example of. But also the publishers are becoming aware that social media can help boost the number of downloads, citations etc.

SAGE, the world’s 5th largest journals publisher, actually offers guidance on how to increase usage and citation of your article by using social media. This includes getting on Twitter (they even have guidelines for how to use Twitter), contributing to Wikipedia, joining academic networks and making use of Facebook and LinkedIn.

The offer of guidance to the world of social media comes out of an acknowledgement that as readers’ expectations change, it is important that articles are visible where the users start their search. Promotion of your articles through new channels will, as SAGE puts it “offer a direct way to reach your readership.”

And I guess that is the hope of every researcher whom has something published: that it will reach the relevant readers.

Even researchers and doctors go to Wikipedia for health information

My general practitioner might just have visitied Wikipedia when he did a Google search on some health topic he came across and needed more information on. A surprise? Well, no not really. I myself use it both outside my professional life and in my public health research life, so why shouldn’t my doctor. However, it is my sense that Wikipedia is still not something researcher talk about when they discuss how they search for information or how they share their own knowledge.

Last week I blogged about Wikipedia trainings at McMaster University in Canada and I seem to have not been able to let go of the topic of Wikipedia. Not having looked that carefully on the relevance of Wikipedia to public health before it wasn’t until now that I came by this article on how Wikipedia can be A Key Tool for Global Public Health Promotion.

The article is published in the latest 2011 volume of Journal of Medical Internet Research (JMIR), a peer-reviewed transdisciplinary journal on health and health care in the Internet age. The authors , Dr James Heilman et al., are all members of the Wiki Project Medicine and therefore naturally advocates of developing Wikipedia in the field of the health.

Based on a belief that Wikipedia’s potential to work as a tool for worldwide health promotion is underestimated, James Heilman et al. draws attention to and encourages medical professionals, their societies, patient groups, and institutions to help improve Wikipedia’s health-related entries. Using recent statistics on who uses Wikipedia they brings attention to the fact that Wikipedia is a major source of health information, both for many professional and the general public. Below some of the figures from the article:

“Studies have found that 70% of junior physicians use Wikipedia in a given week, while nearly 50% to 70% of practicing physicians use it as an information source in providing medical care [34–36]. The junior physicians used Wikipedia more frequently than all other websites excluding Google [34]. Of pharmacists who responded to a questionnaire, 35% admitted using it [37]. The medical articles on Wikipedia receive about 150 million page views per month, with the top 200 most-visited medical articles each receiving more than 100,000 views per month and the top 500 each receiving greater than 60,000 views per month [38].”

Part of the aim of the authors is to get the medical (and this would include the public health community I assume) to see the necessity but also benefits in participating in developing and quality ensuring the medical articles on Wikipedia.

They do this by discussing the intricacies, strengths, and weaknesses of Wikipedia’s health related entries. The listing of weaknesses and limitations of the online encyclopedia are very useful as they provide important background knowledge to be aware of both when using and contributing to Wikipedia.

Another useful listing in the article are a list of reasons why physician should contribute to Wikipedia (they highlights below are my highlights)

• It may be personally satisfying to provide an important educational service for individuals looking for health information, and to see articles grow that one created or improved.
• While not having a high scientific impact, Wikipedia’s articles have a high social impact due to its broad readership. In the experience of the authors, a newly created article can often be found among the top Google results within a day, often outperforming review articles in highly regarded medical journals.
• Editing or adding information helps contributing students or professionals master the subject matter and learn more about the evidence underpinning it.
• Translating complex ideas into accessible concepts and language is an interesting intellectual challenge, which can help in everyday nontechnical communication with patients.
• Writing for Wikipedia teaches modern online communication.
• WikiProject Medicine offers participation and recognition in a Web-based international community.

Reading the list, I couldn’t help thinking whether adding to this list a public health obligation to share knowledge on a media which so many people use. Using the argument that medical professionals by contributing to health related entries live up to a responsibility of providing patients and colleagues with the correct information. Perhaps it is taking it a little too far, but then again my guess is that it could be a motivating factor for many physicians and researchers. In addition, there could be a benefit for researchers in sharing findings, research projects and results with a broader group and thereby live up to the obligation of communicating science and promoting their own research.

Having more people contribute to Wikipedia, however requires increased awareness and training in using it. The idea of familiarizing university students and staff through workshops as they have been doing at McMaster University is a relevant strategy. Perhaps it could even be taken a step further and included in mandatory classes on science communication.

Public health interest in a correct and elaborate wikipedia?

I just thought I’d share with you a short follow-up to my previous post about a Wikipedia training session at McMaster University’s Faculty of Health Sciences. In an article in the online local newspaper TheSpec.com the session, which approximately 30 people attended, is mentioned.

There are some interesting statistics and an insight into how one can almost get hooked on sharing knowledge via Wikipedia. I particular find the reflections by Dr. James Heilman (president of Wikimedia Canada) on public health responsibility in making sure that health and medicine related information on Wikipedia is correct, very interesting:

“Whether we like it or not, the world is going to Wikipedia as its primary source of information … so I see it as a public health measure for physicians to make sure the health-care content is accurately covered.”

According to Dr. Christopher Mackie, assistant professor in the Department of Clinical Epidemiology and Biostatistics, it is the hope that the faculty will incorporate Wikipedia in their class assignments. He points out that it would be:

“a huge missed opportunity when you have these very intelligent people doing research papers and learning all about an issue just to have the paper sit on a shelf … we can leverage the knowledge to improve everyone’s knowledge about health-care subjects. We all have an interest in making sure good information is available.”

For Dr James Heilman the project of making researchers and universities explore and contribute to Wikipedia was to continue at University of British Columbia. I believe it was in connection with this event Wikipedia and Higher Education.

I wonder if a similar training session would be something that could be introduced at the University of Copenhagen?

Wikipedia trainings at a faculty of health sciences

There really does seem to be something about Canada + public health + social media. Constantly do I come across initiatives, programmes and conferences from Canadian universities that are exploring the use of social media in health research and communication.

My latest discovery comes from the Faculty of Health Sciences at McMaster University in Ontario. This time it is Wikipedia that is at the focus of attention. A workshop for new Wikipedia writers took place on October 4th this year with the objective to encourage students, faculty researchers and staff to contribute to Wikipedia’s medical and health pages.

The rationale for the workshop was the following:

“Ensuring that high-quality health information is available to help people make informed decisions related to their health can be an important strategy to achieve the social objective of a healthy community. Wikipedia is a major source of health information for the general public and also for professionals in the health field.”

And it continues:

“Knowledge translation is a mandate shared by many organizations and granting bodies. Wikipedia can be part of a knowledge translation strategy. The volume of student work on health and related subjects each term is enormous. In many cases, rather than being publicly available and widely disseminated, high quality work sits on professors shelves or worse. Providing students with the tools to contribute to Wikipedia may make assignments more meaningful.”

The initiative came from the president of Wikimedia Canada, James Heilman, who has also been a contributor to the Wiki Project Medicine.

According to James Heilman, Wikipedia is one of the major sources for health and medical information worldwide. Its medical articles get between 150-200 million page views a month (in English alone) with up to 70 per cent of physicians using it in their clinical practice. The reason for reaching out to universities is according to James Heilman:

“Right now, Wikipedia is a good source of information but it could be better. To improve Wikipedia we need the input of the academic community.”

The workshop was offered free of charge to the participants but was partly sponsored by the university itself  through its Department of Clinical Epidemiology and Biostatistics.

The workshop naturally has a wiki-entry where the objective and programme details are available.

I have not yet been able to find information on how the workshop went or how many participated, but as an initiative in itself I find it very interesting. Having the last couple of days interviewed researchers at the Institute of Public Health at University of Copenhagen, I must say that I find it extremely relevant also in a Danish context. Many people I have talked to do use Wikipedia, but have never reflected on the fact that they themselves can contribute to Wiki-pages. Or know how to do it. Offering the course to students also makes complete sense as using social media technologies, such a Wikipedia, is very much a question of creating a culture around it and train students and researchers to view it as an additional communication channel for research findings.