Researchers in Israel have confirmed that Wikipedia’s coverage of the 2019 pandemic of coronavirus infection (COVID-19) was still based on popular media and academic sources, despite an increase in coverage as the disease progressed. spread during the first wave.
The team’s analysis found that Wikipedia articles cited reliable media sources and high-quality academic research.
“Our study offers an in-depth study of the scientific backbone that underpins Wikipedia’s COVID-19 articles,” wrote the team from Tel Aviv University and the Weizmann Institute of Science in Rehovot.
The study also highlighted how existing articles on key topics related to COVID-19 created a framework or “scientific infrastructure” that helped to provide context and regulate the dissemination of new information. .
“It will also shed light on Wikipedia’s success in disinfecting COVID-19 and may provide insight into how its unique model can be used in other contexts. , “said Jonathan Sobel and colleagues.
A pre-printed version of the research paper can be found on the bioRxiv* server, while the article is subject to peer review.
People came to Wikipedia in their millions for COVID-19 information
Hosting more than 130,000 articles related to health and medicine, Wikipedia has been a prominent source of COVID-19 information for millions of people worldwide since the outbreak began in late December 2020.
Studies of readers and editors of health articles have shown that medical professionals are active readers of Wikipedia and make up about half of those involved in the editing of these articles.
In addition, research analyzing the quality and breadth of medical content has identified Wikipedia as a “key tool for global public health promotion,” says Sobel and colleagues.
“With WHO leaflets citing COVID-19 pandemic disease as‘ infodemic, ’and disinfection that could affect public health, Wikipedia and the his remarks through pandemic, ”the team writes.
While some studies have examined the references used in Wikipedia articles and others have shown that the platform provides a representative sample of the COVID-19 study, the -authorities say no study has focused on the role of media and popular academic sources. reported through the pandemic.
What did the current study cover?
Using citations as a re-reading, Sobel and colleagues analyzed the sources that informed Wikipedia’s growing coverage of COVID-19 during the first wave of the pandemic – between January and January. May 2020.
They found that articles related to Wikipedia coronavirus cited high-quality sources, both from general and academic literature.
Articles tended to cite trusted news outlets and academic journals with high impact features.
Wikipedia COVID-19 A corpus of scientific sources reveals a larger fraction of open access papers as well as a higher impact in Altmetric score. A) A bar plot of the most trusted academic sources. Major magazines are highlighted in green and previews are indicated in red. Below right: boxplot of the Altmetrics distribution score in the COVID-19 Wikipedia corpus – the dump from May 2020, the COVID-19 corpus and the scientific sources from the Europmc COVID-19 study. B) Fraction of open access sources, C) Fraction of previews from BioRxiv and MedRxiv.
Despite an increase in pre-published articles promising positive results, Wikipedia tended to use peer-reviewed studies published in full-featured journals over non-repetitive studies. audited uploaded independently on pre-printed servers.
However, a timely study of the growth in COVID-19 content and latency analysis showed article citations, although high academic levels were generally maintained after the outbreak, there was some compromise on quality .
While the total number of academic references decreased in some articles, references to popular media increased.
“Most of Wikipedia’s COVID-19 content was supported by citations from reputable sources – but more from the general media than from academic publications,” wrote Sobel and colleagues.
This may have reflected efforts to keep up with the day, the team said.
Wikipedia article science papers network COVID-19 (DOI). The network mapping scientific papers cited in more than one article in the COVID-19 Wikipedia corpus were constructed using each DOI linking at least two Wikipedia articles. This network consists of 454 margins, 179 DOI (Blue) and 136 Wikipedia articles (Yellow). A move into the collection of Wikipedia articles dealing with the development of COVID-19 drugs is indicated by margins in red linking the DOIs cited directly in the article and margins in blue linking of these DOIs to closely related articles mentioning the same DOIs.
Contextualizing science and awaiting deconstruction
This more detailed analysis also revealed how previous articles played an important role in contextualizing a science that underpinned many popular concepts. The previous content served as a framework or “scientific infrastructure” that helped to regulate the dissemination of new information and placed it within the existing knowledge network in Wikipedia.
This infrastructure, which included previous articles on key virus-related topics and information on organizational practices such as strict detection policies, played a vital role in awaiting de- planning and ensuring that high standards were maintained.
The researchers say that another key to Wikipedia’s success in this regard is the centralized management tools that exist due to the community of editors that can be used quickly and efficiently.
“In this case, the presence of WikiProject Medicine, and the creation of a dedicated COVID-19 task force in the form of WikiProject COVID-19, helped to protect quality across many articles and implement the level detection policy. well integrated on dealing articles. with both the popular and scientific part of the virus, “the team explains.
What do the authors conclude?
The researchers say the findings explain ways in which Wikipedia has succeeded in combating disinfection and keeping up with the first wave of the COVID- pandemic. 19.
“With Facebook and other social media giants struggling to implement technical and humane solutions for top-down disinfection, Wikipedia’s dual use of established science and a community of volunteers, it seems, provides a potential model for how this can be achieved – a valuable task at infodemic time, “concludes Sobel and colleagues.
* Important message
bioRxiv publish preliminary scientific reports that are not peer-reviewed and, therefore, should not be seen as final, guiding health-related clinical practice / behavior, or be treated as information established.