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How to Write a Research Paper

Last Updated: February 18, 2024 Fact Checked

This article was co-authored by Chris Hadley, PhD . Chris Hadley, PhD is part of the wikiHow team and works on content strategy and data and analytics. Chris Hadley earned his PhD in Cognitive Psychology from UCLA in 2006. Chris' academic research has been published in numerous scientific journals. There are 14 references cited in this article, which can be found at the bottom of the page. This article has been fact-checked, ensuring the accuracy of any cited facts and confirming the authority of its sources. This article has been viewed 4,174,971 times.

Whether you’re in a history, literature, or science class, you’ll probably have to write a research paper at some point. It may seem daunting when you’re just starting out, but staying organized and budgeting your time can make the process a breeze. Research your topic, find reliable sources, and come up with a working thesis. Then create an outline and start drafting your paper. Be sure to leave plenty of time to make revisions, as editing is essential if you want to hand in your best work!

Sample Research Papers and Outlines

wiki research paper

Researching Your Topic

Step 1 Focus your research on a narrow topic.

  • For instance, you might start with a general subject, like British decorative arts. Then, as you read, you home in on transferware and pottery. Ultimately, you focus on 1 potter in the 1780s who invented a way to mass-produce patterned tableware.

Tip: If you need to analyze a piece of literature, your task is to pull the work apart into literary elements and explain how the author uses those parts to make their point.

Step 2 Search for credible sources online and at a library.

  • Authoritative, credible sources include scholarly articles (especially those other authors reference), government websites, scientific studies, and reputable news bureaus. Additionally, check your sources' dates, and make sure the information you gather is up to date.
  • Evaluate how other scholars have approached your topic. Identify authoritative sources or works that are accepted as the most important accounts of the subject matter. Additionally, look for debates among scholars, and ask yourself who presents the strongest evidence for their case. [3] X Trustworthy Source Purdue Online Writing Lab Trusted resource for writing and citation guidelines Go to source
  • You’ll most likely need to include a bibliography or works cited page, so keep your sources organized. List your sources, format them according to your assigned style guide (such as MLA or Chicago ), and write 2 or 3 summary sentences below each one. [4] X Research source

Step 3 Come up with a preliminary thesis.

  • Imagine you’re a lawyer in a trial and are presenting a case to a jury. Think of your readers as the jurors; your opening statement is your thesis and you’ll present evidence to the jury to make your case.
  • A thesis should be specific rather than vague, such as: “Josiah Spode’s improved formula for bone china enabled the mass production of transfer-printed wares, which expanded the global market for British pottery.”

Drafting Your Essay

Step 1 Create an outline

  • Your outline is your paper’s skeleton. After making the outline, all you’ll need to do is fill in the details.
  • For easy reference, include your sources where they fit into your outline, like this: III. Spode vs. Wedgewood on Mass Production A. Spode: Perfected chemical formula with aims for fast production and distribution (Travis, 2002, 43) B. Wedgewood: Courted high-priced luxury market; lower emphasis on mass production (Himmelweit, 2001, 71) C. Therefore: Wedgewood, unlike Spode, delayed the expansion of the pottery market.

Step 2 Present your thesis...

  • For instance, your opening line could be, “Overlooked in the present, manufacturers of British pottery in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries played crucial roles in England’s Industrial Revolution.”
  • After presenting your thesis, lay out your evidence, like this: “An examination of Spode’s innovative production and distribution techniques will demonstrate the importance of his contributions to the industry and Industrial Revolution at large.”

Tip: Some people prefer to write the introduction first and use it to structure the rest of the paper. However, others like to write the body, then fill in the introduction. Do whichever seems natural to you. If you write the intro first, keep in mind you can tweak it later to reflect your finished paper’s layout.

Step 3 Build your argument in the body paragraphs.

  • After setting the context, you'd include a section on Josiah Spode’s company and what he did to make pottery easier to manufacture and distribute.
  • Next, discuss how targeting middle class consumers increased demand and expanded the pottery industry globally.
  • Then, you could explain how Spode differed from competitors like Wedgewood, who continued to court aristocratic consumers instead of expanding the market to the middle class.
  • The right number of sections or paragraphs depends on your assignment. In general, shoot for 3 to 5, but check your prompt for your assigned length.

Step 4 Address a counterargument to strengthen your case.

  • If you bring up a counterargument, make sure it’s a strong claim that’s worth entertaining instead of ones that's weak and easily dismissed.
  • Suppose, for instance, you’re arguing for the benefits of adding fluoride to toothpaste and city water. You could bring up a study that suggested fluoride produced harmful health effects, then explain how its testing methods were flawed.

Step 5 Summarize your argument...

  • Sum up your argument, but don’t simply rewrite your introduction using slightly different wording. To make your conclusion more memorable, you could also connect your thesis to a broader topic or theme to make it more relatable to your reader.
  • For example, if you’ve discussed the role of nationalism in World War I, you could conclude by mentioning nationalism’s reemergence in contemporary foreign affairs.

Revising Your Paper

Step 1 Ensure your paper...

  • This is also a great opportunity to make sure your paper fulfills the parameters of the assignment and answers the prompt!
  • It’s a good idea to put your essay aside for a few hours (or overnight, if you have time). That way, you can start editing it with fresh eyes.

Tip: Try to give yourself at least 2 or 3 days to revise your paper. It may be tempting to simply give your paper a quick read and use the spell-checker to make edits. However, revising your paper properly is more in-depth.

Step 2 Cut out unnecessary words and other fluff.

  • The passive voice, such as “The door was opened by me,” feels hesitant and wordy. On the other hand, the active voice, or “I opened the door,” feels strong and concise.
  • Each word in your paper should do a specific job. Try to avoid including extra words just to fill up blank space on a page or sound fancy.
  • For instance, “The author uses pathos to appeal to readers’ emotions” is better than “The author utilizes pathos to make an appeal to the emotional core of those who read the passage.”

Step 3 Proofread

  • Read your essay out loud to help ensure you catch every error. As you read, check for flow as well and, if necessary, tweak any spots that sound awkward. [13] X Trustworthy Source University of North Carolina Writing Center UNC's on-campus and online instructional service that provides assistance to students, faculty, and others during the writing process Go to source

Step 4 Ask a friend, relative, or teacher to read your work before you submit it.

  • It’s wise to get feedback from one person who’s familiar with your topic and another who’s not. The person who knows about the topic can help ensure you’ve nailed all the details. The person who’s unfamiliar with the topic can help make sure your writing is clear and easy to understand.

You Might Also Like

Get Started With a Research Project

Community Q&A

Community Answer

  • Remember that your topic and thesis should be as specific as possible. Thanks Helpful 5 Not Helpful 0
  • Researching, outlining, drafting, and revising are all important steps, so do your best to budget your time wisely. Try to avoid waiting until the last minute to write your paper. Thanks Helpful 6 Not Helpful 2

wiki research paper

  • ↑ https://writing.wisc.edu/handbook/assignments/planresearchpaper/
  • ↑ https://writingcenter.unc.edu/tips-and-tools/evaluating-print-sources/
  • ↑ https://owl.purdue.edu/owl/research_and_citation/conducting_research/research_overview/index.html
  • ↑ https://poorvucenter.yale.edu/writing/graduate-writing-lab/writing-through-graduate-school/working-sources
  • ↑ https://opentextbc.ca/writingforsuccess/chapter/chapter-5-putting-the-pieces-together-with-a-thesis-statement/
  • ↑ https://owl.purdue.edu/owl/general_writing/the_writing_process/developing_an_outline/index.html
  • ↑ https://writingcenter.unc.edu/tips-and-tools/introductions/
  • ↑ https://academicguides.waldenu.edu/writingcenter/writingprocess/counterarguments
  • ↑ https://writingcenter.fas.harvard.edu/pages/ending-essay-conclusions
  • ↑ https://writingcenter.unc.edu/tips-and-tools/revising-drafts/
  • ↑ https://academicguides.waldenu.edu/formandstyle/writing/scholarlyvoice/activepassive
  • ↑ https://writingcenter.unc.edu/tips-and-tools/editing-and-proofreading/
  • ↑ https://writingcenter.unc.edu/tips-and-tools/reading-aloud/
  • ↑ https://owl.purdue.edu/owl/general_writing/the_writing_process/proofreading/index.html

About This Article

Chris Hadley, PhD

To write a research paper, start by researching your topic at the library, online, or using an academic database. As you conduct your research and take notes, zero in on a specific topic that you want to write about and create a 1-2 sentence thesis to state the focus of your paper. Then, create an outline that includes an introduction, 3 to 5 body paragraphs to present your arguments, and a conclusion to sum up your main points. Once you have your paper's structure organized, draft your paragraphs, focusing on 1 argument per paragraph. Use the information you found through your research to back up your claims and prove your thesis statement. Finally, proofread and revise your content until it's polished and ready to submit. For more information on researching and citing sources, read on! Did this summary help you? Yes No

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Twenty years of Wikipedia in scholarly publications: a bibliometric network analysis of the thematic and citation landscape

  • Published: 14 February 2023
  • Volume 57 , pages 5623–5653, ( 2023 )

Cite this article

  • Mohamed M. Mostafa 1  

553 Accesses

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Wikipedia has grown to be the biggest online encyclopedia in terms of comprehensiveness, reach and coverage. However, although different websites and social network platforms have received considerable academic attention, Wikipedia has largely gone unnoticed. In this study, we fill this research gap by investigating how Wikipedia is used in scholarly publications since its launch in 2001. More specifically, we review and analyze the intellectual structure of Wikipedia’s scholarly publications based on 3790 Web of Science core collection documents written by 10,636 authors from 100 countries over two decades (2001–2021). Results show that the most influential outlets publishing Wikipedia research include journals such as Plos one, Nucleic Acids Research, the Journal of the Association for Information Science and Technology, the Journal of the American Society for Information Science and Technology, IEEE Access, and Information Processing and Management . Results also show that the author collaboration network is very sparsely connected, indicating the absence of close collaboration among the authors in the field. Furthermore, results reveal that the Wikipedia research institutions’ collaboration network reflects a North–South divide as very limited cooperation occurs between developed and developing countries’ institutions. Finally, the multiple correspondence analysis applied to obtain the Wikipedia research conceptual map reveals the breadth, diversity, and intellectual thrust of the Wikipedia’s scholarly publications. Our analysis has far-reaching implications for aspiring researchers interested in Wikipedia research as we retrospectively trace the evolution in research output over the last two decades, establish linkages between the authors and articles, and reveal trending topics/hotspots within the broad theme of Wikipedia research.

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wiki research paper

(Adapted from Chen et al. 2020a , b )

wiki research paper

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Mostafa, M.M. Twenty years of Wikipedia in scholarly publications: a bibliometric network analysis of the thematic and citation landscape. Qual Quant 57 , 5623–5653 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11135-023-01626-7

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Global Knowledge, Memory and Communication

ISSN : 2514-9342

Article publication date: 1 November 2021

Issue publication date: 5 December 2022

This paper aims to examine the structure and dynamics of scholarly publications dealing with Wikipedia. The research also aims to investigate how such research evolved since its launch in 2001.

Design/methodology/approach

Wikipedia has grown to be the biggest online encyclopedia in terms of comprehensiveness, reach and coverage. Based on 1,040 PubMed Wikipedia documents written by 5,280 authors over two decades (2001–2021), this paper conducts a bibliometric review of the intellectual structure of scholarly publications dealing with Wikipedia.

Results show that annual scholarly publications on Wikipedia growth rate is 13.26. Major outlets publishing Wikipedia’s research are PloS One , the Journal of Medical Internet Research , Nucleic Acids Research , Studies in Health Technology and Informatics , Bioinformatics and the International Journal of Medical Informatics . Results also show that the author collaboration network is very sparse, signifying rather negligible collaboration among the authors. Furthermore, results reveal that the Wikipedia research institutions’ collaboration network reflects what is sometimes termed Wikipedia’s “North-South divide,” indicating limited collaboration between rich and poor nations’ institutions. Finally, the multiple correspondence analysis applied to obtain the Wikipedia research conceptual map and its intellectual structure reveals the intellectual thrust and the diversity of the scholarly publications dealing with Wikipedia.

Originality/value

To the best of the author’s knowledge, this research represents the first application of bibliometric methods to investigate two decades of scholarly publications dealing with Wikipedia based on the PubMed database.

  • Topic modeling
  • Collaboration networks
  • Bibliometric networks
  • Keywords co-occurrence network
  • Scholarly publications

Mostafa, M.M. (2022), "Two decades of Wikipedia research: a PubMed bibliometric network analysis", Global Knowledge, Memory and Communication , Vol. 71 No. 8/9, pp. 947-971. https://doi.org/10.1108/GKMC-03-2021-0056

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Collaboration, information literacy, writing process, a student’s guide to using wikis.

  • CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 by Matt Barton

If you’re like most people, when you hear the word wiki, you automatically think of  Wikipedia . Almost anyone who uses the Internet has used  Wikipedia  from time to time to learn more about any of the millions of topics it covers in its four million pages. Indeed, it might seem harder  not  to use  Wikipedia  than to use it since its pages tend to come up first, or at least in the top five, of most Google searches, and most surveys of the world’s most popular websites put  Wikipedia  in the top ten. Indeed, it’s hard to imagine what the internet would be like today without wikis!

This article is about how you—and your fellow students—can use wikis to help write essays and conduct academic research. To make things easier, we’ve divided it into two sections. First, we’ll talk about how to use wikis to conduct research. Then we’ll talk briefly about using wikis to actually help you write your project.

Wikis as a Research Tool

As a student, though, you’ve probably been discouraged from using Wikipedia by well-meaning teachers. They might have forbidden you from citing or even looking at Wikipedia articles. Most of their objections are based on the myth that “just anybody” can put or change articles on a wiki. What if that article you’re citing about oil spills was authored by a BP employee? What if that article on ghost hunting was put up there by a “believer” who refused to consider any evidence that didn’t confirm her views on the paranormal?

While these suspicions are false— Wikipedia is often more accurate than commercial encyclopedias—these teachers are right about one thing: if you’re writing an academic paper, you need to cite academic sources, and Wikipedia —just like any other encyclopedia—is not an academic source. That’s not their fault; they were never intended to be used by students writing research papers. Instead, they’re designed for everyday people who just want a concise, simplified summary of a topic or issue. The author of an encyclopedia article might go to great lengths to make sure the facts presented there are accurate, but the information is still heavily filtered and diluted by the time it gets to print or screen. That’s because the author has to take in whatever has been written by professional researchers, then interpret it for people who have little to no understanding of the subject at hand.

Imagine trying to describe a new phone app to your tech-savvy friends versus a family member who has never owned a mobile phone. That’s the level of ignorance that every encyclopedia (or Wikipedia ) contributor has to deal with. Needless to say, a lot of information is going to be simplified or just left out entirely.

Academic sources, on the other hand, aren’t filtered or diluted at all. They don’t need to be, because the people who read them are experts in the subject matter. Because they are experts, they are better able to pick out where authors make mistakes. They can also tell (usually) when an author is intentionally being dishonest.

This line between academic and non-academic sources is where Wikipedia shines compared to its print-based cousins. Unlike them, Wikipedia pages are heavily referenced, meaning that the authors are routinely asked to provide credible documentation to back up their information. If you look closely at a page such as the “Deepwater Horizon oil spill” page, you’ll notice lots of numbers in brackets at the end of some sentences—nearly five hundred different sources! Click on one, and you’ll jump straight to the citation, which in most cases is a credible source such as an academic article, book, reputable website, government report, or newspaper item. Even though your teacher might not accept Wikipedia articles as a source, he or she is probably fine with a scientific report from the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management or the Harte Research Institute for Gulf of Mexico Studies. If these sources aren’t available online, you’ll need to go to your library’s homepage to figure out how to access them. You can do that by searching your library’s database, but if it gets confusing, just ask a reference librarian to help you.

Wikis like the Wikipedia can help you do research, but remember—they’re just there to give you a shallow understanding of a topic. When you’re ready to go deeper, click on the sources and find the actual academic research you need for your project.

Wikis as a Writing Tool

Using wikis to actually help you write a paper is very different than just using them for research. The big problem is other people. When you write an old-fashioned essay, you get to make all the decisions regarding what you say, how you say it, what order you put it in, and how many times you proofread it before handing it in. A wiki, on the other hand, turns all of these decisions into discussions. If you anger the other people working on the wiki, they might simply roll back your changes or even banish you! In any event, a poorly functioning group with lots of anger and resentment is very unlikely to produce a good wiki, assuming they produce anything at all.

Instead of viewing wikis as a writing tool, then, you should view them as a writing community. Understand that the other people involved are probably just as proud and convinced of the rightness of their choices as you are. Wiki writers have to be willing to see their own work routinely modified or even deleted by other people. That’s a big blow to a lot of students’ egos, especially those with good grades in their writing courses and who are proud of their ability. There’s always the temptation to get angry or depressed about it, lose your focus, and end up with a bad grade.

If you’re starting a new wiki project, then, the most important thing you can do is make sure that everyone onboard is clear about the goals you’ve set and the method for getting there. Plan ahead for disagreements and treat everyone with respect, especially when you feel they don’t deserve it. For your part, if you’ve argued your case and the majority still disagrees with you, don’t be stubborn or resentful. Just quietly accept it and move on, and don’t let it stop you from trying to make the rest of the project as good as it can be. If you show that you can handle disagreement in a professional and mature fashion, you’ll gain a level of trust and respect that’s a lot more valuable in the long run than the short-lived satisfaction you get from lashing out.

On a positive note, wikis are very simple to use, and the software is often free. Wikispaces , Wikidot , and Wetpaint are great choices for anyone new to wikis. Check out their various features and see which one will work best for your project. It’s also a good idea to look for existing wikis that are similar to what you have in mind; you’ll learn a lot by example. Even if you can’t find a wiki on your particular subject, such as the prevention of oil spills, you might find one on the prevention of forest fires. Whatever worked (and didn’t work) for the forest fire page will likely apply to yours as well, so study it carefully.

There’s a lot to know about wikis, and a good place to learn more is Wikipedia itself. Next time you’re doing research, take some time to notice the numbers in brackets and examine the sources the contributors have used to support their points. If you’re creating or contributing to a wiki project, don’t treat it like a traditional essay. Now, you’re working with other people. Be clear about the goals of the project, any rules and guidelines, and always be willing to compromise.

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How to Build a Paper Research Wiki

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Back in the early days of Study Hacks, I introduced the paper research database . The idea was to build a database of every quote you might need to cite in your paper. These citations could be sorted by date or type, and be linked to their matching source. The technique works because it helps you build and organize a comprehensive understanding of an event or idea before you start writing about it.

I should be clear: I love this technique . I used it to write two massive art history research papers while here at MIT. Recently, however, when I began the research process for my new book , I found myself drawn to a new strategy: the paper research wiki .

In this post I want to explain this approach, which has the potential to significantly improve the complexity and confidence of your written arguments.

The Basics of a Research Wiki

The research wiki I’m currently using is not my first attempt at this strategy. In fact, it’s the fourth research wiki I’ve started. The first three quickly faded in disuse. This last attempt, however, has become an incredible aid to my writing.

What’s the difference? It all comes down to structure…

If you jump blindly into a wiki, and start creating pages left and right, you’re unlikely to gain much benefit. When I attempted this approach with my first research wikis, I ended up building a page for every idea or piece of information, with few internal links. The site soon devolved into an overly complicated, wannabe notebook.

For my latest wiki, by contrast, I enforced structure. Specifically, I introduced a strict information hierarchy:

  • At the bottom level, there are primary sources. Above them are second-level structures. Above them are third-level structures, and so on.
  • My linking rule is simple: pages can only link to those from a lower level. Primary sources cannot link to any other pages. Second-level structures can link only to primary sources. Third-level structures can only link to second-level structures and primary sources. Etc.

As you ascend through the levels of this hierarchy, you increase the complexity of the ideas being captured. For example, here’s a screen shot of the home page for my book research wiki:

Paper Research Wiki

Notice, I have two types of primary sources : interview subjects and research papers. Each interview subject has his or her own page where I capture all of the relevant information — from contact information to interview transcripts. Each research paper has a page with a full citation and summary. These are the foundational blocks on top of which everything else about my book is built.

My second-level structures are ideas. For example, if you click on the ideas link you’ll see a list that includes the Failed Simulation Effect . The corresponding page describes the idea, linking back to the relevant primary sources, including the relevant research papers and students who exhibited the effect.

At the third-level , I have annotated outlines for each of the major parts of my books. The annotated outlines link heavily to both ideas and interview subjects.

When it comes to writing a part of the book, I can start with the relevant annotated outline and quickly drill down to the needed information. As you might imagine, this allows me to write with great confidence.

Applying the Technique to Your Paper

For a standard college research paper, I would suggest the following information hierarchy (this is only a suggestion, feel free to modify as needed):

  • Have your primary sources include the actual primary sources : books, articles, interviews. Create one page for each such source. Include on the page the properly formatted citation and a list of the relevant quotes you might use from the source.
  • Have your second-level structures include events and ideas. Create one page for each of these items. On the page, you can link every quote and fact in your description to the matching primary source.
  • Have your third-level structures capture timelines and comparison charts. For example, you could have a page that orders and dates a sequence of important events (linking each to its matching second-level page), or a page that compares different related ideas (linking to the matching idea descriptions).
  • Have your fourth-level structures capture large arguments. Here you can draw freely from all of the lower structures.

Notice, this wiki is different than an outline. Starting from the fourth-level argument pages, you should be able to easily drill down to the primary sources needed to build a standard flat outline . In other words, put most of your thinking into the wiki, then generate the pre-writing outline at the last minute.

The Advantages of a Wiki Approach

Wiki-driven writing enjoys two important advantages. First, the structure of the wiki helps you structure your research. Plugging your research into a clear information hierarchy is superior to simply creating a large pile of stuff. Second, working through these different levels forces you to do lots of high-level thinking before you get to the outlining and writing phase. In some sense, your paper research wiki requires you to master the nuances and complexity of the topic before you think about what you want to say about it. I can tell you from experiences, this is the approach that generates A* results .

Finding a Wiki

If you’re tech savvy, you could potentially setup your own wiki on a personal web hosting account. But I suggest just using PBworks (formerly PBwiki), which has every feature you need, works fine, and is free. It takes roughly 7 seconds to setup a PBworks wiki, so the required effort is minimal.

Practice Makes Perfect

It takes a little time to customize this technique to suit your own tastes. But if you’re serious about producing high quality papers, then I highly suggest experimenting with this strategy. I’ve been loving it.

43 thoughts on “How to Build a Paper Research Wiki”

Great idea. I might try this for my dissertation research, which I’ll be starting over the summer. Seems like a much more manageable (and useful) system than my binder filled with my thesis research…

Oh my god, is that research for a new book I’m seeing?

Oops, sorry, I jumped ahead to the image without reading the entire article first.

Cal, are you familiar with the index-card method for writing research papers (easily adapted to MS Word), which I see, in many variations (some better than others), in a lot of how-to-study books?

Essentially, you write an outline for your paper (developed after scouring sources), you create a numbered list of your sources, and then you gather your data on “indexed” index cards (i.e., a single quote or fact on an index card, labeled with the source you found it in, the section of your paper it belongs to, and a little subtitle about the subject to which it pertains; some index cards basically just have a personal idea from your head). And then you arrange the cards in order and write the first draft of your paper from them.

I see this method suggested commonly in study-skills books, and am actually okay with it tho at most my papers are 30 to 40 pages long. Yet I encounter so many other suggestions on how to write research papers and wonder if they are actually an improvement on this method, improvements that I have failed to recognize. What is your evaluation of this technique? How does it compare and contrast with the techniques you espouse?

Wikis are still too cumbersome. There are much more user friendly software packages for this job. I like most the Evernote, which works and syncs on all platforms you may want to use. My basic problem was that I wanted to progress to the next stage of the research process, before I have finished the preceding one. I wanted to achieve too much too quickly and end up with nothing. To solve this, I looked for a process that would allow me to: – store structural ideas while doing the reading; – note various ideas for possible structure, while linking to them snippets from readings – trust that no idea will be lost. Wiki would be one option, but it is often too cumbersome as one needs to think about how to record the idea not just simply record it. With Evernote this is much easier. Here is my current workflow for a literature review: 1. Create a separate Evernote account for the project 2. Gather all literature sources, create a new notebook for each source and drop all files there (you can also clip from web, mail yourself ideas, note them to your mobile it is all synced). 3. Read each source and create Notes from all potentially useful bits of information (select text + double-click CapsLock – that is all it takes to make a note from any PDF or webpage – much easier than wiki) 4. attach tags to all Notes; each Note may have multiple tags 5. Tags can be arranged into a hierarchy that gradually morphs into the structural outline of the paper. This is a key! Tagging and retagging creates the structure from a pile of clippings. 6. After all sources sorted and with workable tag-based outline, go through all notes – merge, delete, re-tag etc. 7. You are ready to open word processor and start writing, and copy-pasting (you can also export en masse from EN, but I did not find this useful).

This workflow mimicks the logic of the qualitative research process. On the pro level, this is usually supported by expensive software packages like Nvivo or Atlas.TI, but it can be done in Evernote, which is free and much, much more lightweight. People on Macs swear on DevonThink, but I run on Windows only.

Cal, thanks for this helpful article!

Personally, I’d be interested in getting an insight into your whole workflow when writing the two books mentioned.

And although I enjoy reading your blog, it seems to me that you often choose commercial solutions over free and open source alternatives which sometimes are even better.

E.g. as a wiki engine you could use tiddlywiki which runs from your harddisk or usb pendrive ( https://tiddlywiki.com/ ) and can be kept in sync with an online version at tiddlyspot.com (where you can also collaborate with others, access earlier versions of your wiki etc.),plus you don’t need to be tech savvy for that.

Another great alternative would be the zim desktop wiki ( https://zim-wiki.org/ ), a cross-plattform desktop wiki with versioning, to-do features, calendar and so on.

Overall, I’d like to see a greater amount of open source and linux related content as this certainly meets the financial needs of (doctoral) studends. (like this: https://academiclifehacker.wordpress.com/2009/02/19/academic-software-roundup-for-linux/ )

Great tips, nonetheless. So thanks again,

Great idea. I might try this for my dissertation research, which I’ll be starting over the summer.

I highly recommend it. At first, you’ll be a little frustrated that it’s taking you a little bit of time to enter things into the wiki. But once it grows past a certain size, you’ll start to love the structure it provides.

Oh my god, is that research for a new book I’m seeing?

I’m planning on posting some more information and updates on the project soon. Stay tuned…

I think the paper research database, in some sense, is like an advanced index card system. The wiki, by contrast, adds structure and high-level thinking in a way that a primary source-centric approach does not.

My basic problem was that I wanted to progress to the next stage of the research process, before I have finished the preceding one.

This is insightful. Overcoming this issue was one of the most important things I’ve learned to do as a student interested in producing good writing.

Wiki would be one option, but it is often too cumbersome as one needs to think about how to record the idea not just simply record it.

That’s what I like about the Wiki, it forces me to spread out the thinking over the whole research process. It’s slightly more cumbersome while processing sources, but you end up performing a *lot* more thinking in total, hopefully generating a better result.

That being said, I’m not that familar with Evernote, so thank you for providing a good tutorial on how a student might use it as an alternative research system.

I tend to go with whatever is available and easy. I use pbworks because it was free and fast. I use excel and word because it’s already on my machine, etc. I rely on slightly more savvy readers like you to point me toward superior alternatives. Both tiddlywiki and zim sound cool. I’m going to check those out.

Great post, Cal. I’ve used pbworks for two other research projects in the past. One was a literature review and the other involved program development. Your tips on how to structure the wiki and the value of the thinking you do as you structure it are right on.

The additional value of using a tool like pbworks is as a team project management tool for research projects where you’re collaborating with others. The lit review project mentioned above involved two other students; we had widely varied schedules and had a hard time finding one day and time to meet that would work for everyone. The wiki allowed for us to do our individual work relative to the project, upload it to the wiki, and not experience any overlap. With three of us forcing ourselves to use the same logic and structure of the wiki we found ourselves easily following each other’s work. Of course, the wiki didn’t completely replace meeting in person. But it did help create a common organization for the project between all of us, keep us all marching in the same direction, and made it easy to transfer all of our work to our professor in one nice package when we were done.

The wiki also allows everyone to know who’s doing what, when, and how much. Therefore, it has a built in accountability function. Using it helped cut down on the social loafing I’ve experienced in the past from other group projects (and been guilty of myself).

I was in the process of getting another wiki set up for a new team research project and will add your suggestions into the structure.

Thanks again for the post.

So why don’t you just use endnote or even evernote? To me it would seem like an easier solution as most of the databasing can be done through the program. Just a thought.

Coincidentally, I was just assigned a paper that this wiki idea is perfect for. I’m going to try it out. Thanks.

Oh, beautiful. Just what I was looking for to do exam notes for law.

And the reason I think it will work really well for those as well as research papers (in case you’re interested) is basically because the structure of law school in common law countries is a cause of action in each class, or one element of a cause of action, with a lot of cases that illustrate how they work in particular circumstances for reading. Exams are a hypothetical fact situation. Generally you pass if you can work through the steps to determine whether each cause of action will work in the given situation, and you get the A* if you can comb through the detail and facts of each case to really analyse how relevant a legal principle is to the ones you’re looking at in the exam. I’ve never really been able to map any of your other study techniques onto law school without big tweaks because they just don’t fit the style, but this is probably something that could be maintained on a daily basis – you do the wiki pages (cases, legislation) for level one throughout semester, review once you’re done with a particular limb (one or two classes) by putting it into a level 2 page that explains this element, review once you’re done with a page that outlines the whole cause of action (maybe a month) with a level 3 page, and then stick the whole thing into a level 4 page at the end which basically lists them all and maybe gives some guidance on which one to go for for a given exam situation.

Cal, Great post. I’m going back to grad school for another master’s degree this Fall and found the Red Book about a year ago. I wish I had had it in undergrad and during my first grad degree!

I’m curious how using the research wiki might fit into the “process” for writing research papers in the Red Book. Any guidance?

Thank you for your time and effort! It’s been a wonderful learning experience for me.

Yours, Jason

A couple of other recommendations for personal wikis. Firstly, I wouldn’t go with tiddlywiki for this as it gets bigger.

Better alternatives. Wikidpad, which is free and is very powerful. However if you have the money, I’d spring for the excellent ConnectedText, which is very powerful, fast and nice to use.

This seems like a great idea to bigger projects. I’m so happy I found these kind of blogs, before I’m joining University next year, all these ideas, all these disciplines. I’m almost looking forward to a year of hard studying!

great post, thank you. I’m totally on your side. I love wiki too.

This looks great! One question – How do you pull together your bibliography when the time comes? Certain classes or professors require different bibliography styles – so would one copy the information from the Primary Sources in the wiki to another database for formatting into the proper style, or somehow make the wiki do the work?

Based on your screenshot and the ‘ideas’ link you mentioned in the post, I gather that the actual structure of the wiki is:

1)a wiki-wide directory

2)a level directory

3)the pages themselves

In other words, the wiki hierarchy is not just 4 levels high but three levels deep.

Does PB’s tagging option come in handy, at all?

Based on your screenshot and the ‘ideas’ link you mentioned in the post, I gather that the actual structure of the wiki is: 1)a wiki-wide directory 2)a level directory 3)the pages themselves

Something like that seems to work well. Though it’s not fixed in stone.

I haven’t tried the tagging option yet, as I haven’t really seen the scenario where it would help.

I haven’t really seen the scenario where it would help.

Noticed that tagging a PB page ‘template’ makes it a template next time you use it, which is handy.

Thanks for the wonderful post, btw. I think this ‘node-based’ wiki approach (embedding a link page, and adding the links/pages as you go along) let’s you, the researcher, bring the complexity to the project, rather than imposing a structure a priori on your work. The underlying organizing principle being radically simple, but not simplistic.(Hearkens to mind an another MIT figure on language).

Can’t wait to see your ideas on the doctoral dissertation, but hurry my defense is coming up : )

At risk of seeming like a blog-hog, I’m posting again to give a little dirt on TiddlyWiki, which I found a better solution to PBworks. Wanted to illustrate what Keith posted about not needing to be “tech savvy,” because I surely ain’t:

My two step / two second solution to Tiddly-research-Wiki creation: 1. Write a wiki-wide TOC (table of contents) in the main menu on the front – and only – initial page, 2. Create the corresponding pages by adding double brackets as you write the page names inside the TOC.

That’s it, ya’ got yerself a wiki.

Btw, yes, PBworks can work this way too, but, it was significantly slower because you’re online with a delay (up to 7 seconds on my count), and it had too many clicks to get to the same point as Tiddly. If you further arm yourself with a cheat sheet here [https://www.linuxbeacon.com/doku.php/cheatsheets], and a FAQ there [https://www.giffmex.org/twfortherestofus.html], both for absolute beginners since there’s a lot of documentation, you can even do advanced things right off the bat (text formatting, printing, tables).

Hope that helps, /Cas

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I’m off Wikis altogether and on to Onenote! Just curious if anyone else has tried to apply the above system to onenote, and how it worked out?

For those of us stuck with windows, I can’t imagine a more perfect solution. In fact, I had no idea what to do with it until I started adding structure as per the description in the above in the post. Your wiki-like onenote pages because a virtual sandbox for ideas, but the nuts and bolts of organizing a ‘spine’ of citations and concepts garnered from texts can be done in a quote table supporting it.

Since its all integrated into MS Office, you can have your database cake and eat it (or your wiki at least), too.

Thanks for the great step by steps on how to create a research paper wiki. Well written.

your blog is an answer to a most desperate prayer. I’m a 3rd year “grad stud” working on a phd in biomedical sciences. I passed my orals in august, got married two weeks later and nothing in the lab has worked since… almost daily i pound my head against the wall asking why nothing works. i now have a few ideas how i might improve-but any additional ideas would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks for this wiki post, this is great! I have been all over the place with my dissertation notes and all the word docs I use to house them, and this sounds like a great way to organize and structure things better. I’m not at all familiar with wiki, but I’m going to go give this a try. Thank you!

Hey Cal! Great post here. I have one question though. I assume that due to your math background you are familiar with LaTex. I just started grad school and am brainstorming some ideas for paper tracking. I was wondering what you thought the advantages of a wiki were over say creating a directory structure and tex documents.

I like tex because eventually that is how all my papers and writings will be formatted and published. I also enjoy a good afternoon of vim and tex writing as well, but I see some of the positives about using a wiki. Most notably the fact that you can easily view and navigate the content. What argument would you provide in choosing the wiki over something like a good latex set up? I would also be interested to see your response to the comparison of using Evernote rather than a wiki as well.

Thanks for any comments and suggestions!

I was wondering what you thought the advantages of a wiki were over say creating a directory structure and tex documents.

When working on mathematics research, I do use latex documents — one per potential problem — as my central organization tool. As you note, the ability to easily render math is essential for this specific type of work.

Great system! I think I’m going to start learning how to implement that for my senior high research paper, so that when I’m actually in college I will have the system down good!

Love it! Just implemented it and blogged about it.

I have the same question as Jason–how does this fit in to or correspond to the method in the red book? Do you not make photocopies in this method? I’m a beginning PhD student and just read the red book because I really like this blog, but I’m not sure if the photocopy method would be practical given the number of sources in my research papers. But maybe that makes it even more practical, I’m not sure.

So now I have gone through all of my sources and extracted the relevant information onto different pages in PBworks. I’m ready to start the structural work, but I’m frustrated at the prospect because many of my sources covered more than one of the ideas within my paper topic. So, when I link back to the primary sources, I will have to comb through the irrelevant quotes for that topic to get the relevant ones. Is there an aspect of this system that I’m not understanding? I’m starting to like your research paper database idea better. Perhaps it would work well to build a research paper database for primary sources, then create a wiki for the second and third levels,pasting the relevant quotes into the ideas and outline pages.

This is such an amazing approach to organizing the paper writing experience. I don’t know how I ended up on your site Cal, but my mind is blown. I have no doubt that your writing wisdom will change the way I approach my writing. As far as using a wiki…I’m very tech savvy, but I agree with the others that think starting a wiki for this task is just overkill. If you’ve got a mac, save up your coffee money for 2 weeks and get Scrivener. Does everything you need a Paper Research Wiki to do, all right out the box, no setup required, AND you can set up multiple ‘wiki’ styled researched situations within a single document. I don’t work for the Scrivener people or anything, just sharing what worked for me.

Here’s a slightly rambling but still great youtube video applying the research wiki technique using Zotero (a free addon for Firefox) which was created by academics for academics to make research easy. It’s clearly not just a reference manager. I found it very helpful to see the wiki strategy in use, rather than reading about it. It’s much clearer to me how to go about it now. Interestingly, he says that he’s sure that he has “radically oversimplified” the strategy from Study Hacks, but I am not so sure since the philosophy here is that of professed ‘radical simplicity’.

How does your use or application of the strategy jive with this one? Does any of you use Zotero for building a research wiki, or use it but organize things differently? Please share, especially if you have a video, screen shots or anything tangible. A picture is worth 1000 words.

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Please forgive my old-school ignorance here- I am not as tech-savvy as the rest here: What is the advantage of wikis over documents in Microsoft Word and just making folders and sub-folders for related ideas? There must be a difference (other than the graphics aspect) that I am missing…thanks

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Hi Cal, I was wondering if you can recommend a particular program for organizing notes on research papers. Both in terms of organizing research papers and notes written about them.

Cal, do you think I could see your wiki myself? This is brilliant stuff, but I want to compare yours to mine manually to see if I need to fix anything.

We might be a little late to the party here, but I think we have created something that would interest you. Ref Ren allows users to create a bibliography citation on their mobile device by converting highlighted text. That citation is then saved where it can be saved, edited and exported for later use.

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I’m writing a 10 page research paper on Joseph Stalin and there is so much info on him i’m not sure what’s important and what’s not anymore. And also what would be a good thesis? Mine right now is how he affected the soviet Union and the world during and after WWII, but I’m not sure if that’s good enough.

Now in 2022 the options for building a personal wiki are massive. Are you aware of this? Have you a personal one?

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Wiki Papers

WikiPapers will be a wiki library for (eventually all) published research papers from peer-reviewed scientific journals . Online bibliographies are an indispensible tool for researchers these days. This is where people go when they want to find a paper and information about it. As a wiki this is much more than just a list of published papers. Every paper will have its page where bibliographic information is stored alongside many other information about the paper such as its relation to other papers, the research group and place, research type (theory/experiment), errata, comments, links to news coverage, impact or a summary for non-experts. If the paper is freely licensed, the pdf-document itself can be added.

An important and probably most-used feature is the search engine, that allows finding papers in the first place. It will allow settings like research area, time of publication or open-access availability.

Another very important feature is categorization. There will be category pages and every paper page can have an arbitrary number of categories. Categories can be categorized as well, just like in Wikimedia Commons . Through this, all papers about one specific topic can be sorted and found. The build-up of such a category tree is really where hitherto existing databases perform poorly and a wiki-based platform has its strength.

WikiPapers is not a new journal or an alternative publishing platform. Much like Wikipedia it is not for establishing new knowledge, but to present a structured access to it.

Of course WikiPapers will have much of the functionality that existing citation databases provide: Listing citations, creating citation graphs, computing impact factors, h-index etc.. Handling of bibliographic data (as in the proposed WikiCite project) would also be an important task. WikiPapers will provide bibtex and other formated outputs. A connection for citations in Wikipedia would also make a lot of sense, but as I understand, this is currently being implemented through WikiCite .

Apart from the Paper namespace, there could be additional pages for research institutions and authors, which provide information such as identifiers, list of published articles, publishing history, research awards etc.. Of course each journal would get a page in a "Journal" namespace. Another namespace could be about research topics, where e.g. introductory papers, milestones and latest highlights are listed.

WikiPapers is really the project I miss most on the internet. There are millions of researchers with a strong interest to present their papers with as much information as possible, and to be found by other scientists. This creates a huge potential for people willing to contribute to WikiPapers. In return, WikiPapers will be an indispensable resource for researchers and everyone else.

Proposed by [ edit ]

Geek3 in 2018

Alternative names [ edit ]

WikiScholar, WikiCite, WikiJournal, Bibli, Wikibib

Comparison to other proposed projects on Wikimedia [ edit ]

  • WikiCite : Certainly the most active project related to research papers. Aims to develop a database of open citations and linked bibliographic data, which can then for instance be referenced from Wikipedia. WikiCite is not meant as a “sister project” like WikiPapers, but rather a “service project”. While WikiCite is more of a database “in the background”, WikiPapers aims to be used directly by people who want to find papers and information about it. There might be a possibility to combine the two projects like front-end and back-end.
  • Scholia : Implements many of the features that WikiPapers should have, such as citation graphs, paper pages and author pages. Scholia is based entirely on information from WikiData. It's not a wiki to gather information, but more a tool to display it in new and interesting ways.
  • WikiScholar : Closed proposal from 2006, which shares many ideas of WikiPapers. It is not so clear if WikiScholar was meant only as a database or more Wikipedia-like, as WikiPapers.
  • WikiResearch WikiPapers : Only about open-access papers, thus not sufficient for people who want to browse all existing research.
  • Wikidata : Existing project for all sorts of structured data. Not a front-end and not suited for browsing research articles. Also includes a lot of information unrelated to research papers, thus making it harder to find the desired information.
  • Wikireference : Rejected project which was about a bibliography database, much like realized by WikiCite.
  • Acawiki : Provides openly licensed summaries about papers, so far around 1600. Such summaries will be part of WikiPapers as well, however not mandatory. It's more important to have the entry of a paper at all.
  • Wikiresearch : More about a loose incomprehensive collection of research articles and for doing original research on the Wiki.
  • WikiScientists : Not mainly about existing papers, but about information for scientists and also for original research.
  • WikiPAPER : According to the brief description it sounds like a platform where new papers can be created.
  • WikiJournal : A place where new open-access research articles can be created or submitted.
  • WikiResearch : Closed and very brief proposal about “information and research sources”.
  • Wikicite/WikiTextrose : More about relations between different texts.
  • Wikiabstracts : Database of existing texts, with newly written abstracts for each text.

Comparison to existing non-Wikimedia projects [ edit ]

There is a large number of existing platforms around this topic:

  • Crossref : A non-profit project to extensively list scientific publications. Focused on references between publications. Lacks wiki-editable meta-information. In fact, Crossref does many things right and can be a role-model in several respects.
  • Google Scholar : Does a great job for searching papers, however has very limited meta-information and page functionality and lacks the wiki-aspect. Wrong bibliographic data cannot be cleaned up by users. No category tree, very limited meta-information. User privacy is not ensured.
  • Web of science : Mostly focussed on citations between papers. Commercial project, that provides much of its informaition only to paying customers.
  • Pub Med : Research article database with search function. Mostly focussed on life sciences and biomedical information, lacking many papers from other fields. No wiki functionality.
  • ResearchGate : Lists research papers and larger amounts of meta-information. In contrast to WikiPapers it also aims to create a social network. ResearchGate is commercially and not community- driven. Community-generated information is not free. There's a long list of criticisms such as copyright infringements and deception of users. The platform tries to keep users trapped on their pages for instance by hiding links to the original publication site. All this makes many researchers uncomfortable using it.
  • Scopus : Elsevier’s abstract and citation database with search function.
  • Microsoft Academic : Research paper search engine with large amount of entries.
  • Paperity : Aggregator of open access journals and papers.
  • CiteSeerX : Search engine and digital library for scientific and academic papers, primarily in the fields of computer and information science.
  • WikiPapers : a structured bibliography of papers related to wikis.

There are many other projects, focused on certain research topics only, such as INSPIRE-HEP or the Astrophysics Data System .

The crucial aspect of WikiPapers is that it's a wiki. It is editable by anyone, which allows to collect much more information and refine it than otherwise possible.

Domain names [ edit ]

https://papers.wikimedia.org https://bib.wikimedia.org

Technical stuff [ edit ]

Automatic imports [ edit ].

There are some hundred million existing research papers, which are impossible to import manually until a solid user-basis is reached. Therefore the project can only start out with automated imports of existing freely available basic metadata. A suitable source could be the Crossref API . Data available in Wikidata can be used as well. Once the database of WikiPapers is big enough to attract users, it can probably work without automatic imports. The publishing scientists themselves would be interested enough to add each newly published paper.

Identifiers [ edit ]

The page name will probably be just the paper title, with some special characters simplified. In case of colliding titles, "Title (Author Year)" may be used. For each unique Digital object identifier there can be a redirect to the paper page.

Namespaces [ edit ]

Some of the namespaces in WikiPapers can be

  • Paper: Main namespace with one page per research paper. There will be sections for bibliographic information, link to publication website, preprints, cited references, trivia...
  • Thesis: Doctoral theses, as well as master's, bachelor's and other theses can be listed in a similar manner as papers.
  • Book: Scientific books may be added as well
  • Doi: Direct redirect to each paper by entering the doi.
  • Journal: One page for each of the ~10 4 existing peer-reviewed journals. Various information as well as automatically generated citation statistics can be presented there.
  • Author: Page for each individual author of research papers. Will show a machine-created list of assigned papers and manually added infos such as the ORCID .
  • Researchgroup: One page for each research group, listing affiliation, research topics, researchers and papers.
  • Portal: A user friendly place to start out with some research topic and find information in a well-arranged way.
  • Category: The native category tree will be used for research topics with all levels of specialisation, e.g. Chemistry , Computational Fluid Dynamics or GW150914

Apart from that of course the usual ones, such as Help , User , Talk , Template , Special etc..

Search function [ edit ]

A high quality search function is crucial. It should be eventually better than the one on Wikipedia. For CC-BY articles, the full text can be used for the search. With copyrighted articles, the search can use title, abstract, keywords, wiki-page content, categories and connections to other papers.

Discussion [ edit ]

Support [ edit ], neutral [ edit ].

  • I believe this has quite a lot in common with WikiJournals , which is currently going through discussion to become a new Wikimedia project. SelfieCity ( talk ) 20:46, 1 July 2019 (UTC) [ reply ]

Oppose [ edit ]

wiki research paper

  • Rejected new project proposals
  • Proposed projects
  • Open project proposals - sources
  • Proposed projects - research
  • Proposed projects - bibliometry and references
  • Pages using infobox templates with ignored data cells
  • Toggle limited content width

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COMMENTS

  1. Research paper

    Research paper may refer to: . Academic paper (also called scholarly paper), which is in academic journals and contains original research results or reviews existing results or shows a totally new invention; Capstone project or synthesis project, is a hands-on project, essay, or other document submitted in support of a candidature for a degree or professional qualification, written in a ...

  2. Research

    Original research, also called primary research, is research that is not exclusively based on a summary, review, or synthesis of earlier publications on the subject of research.This material is of a primary-source character. The purpose of the original research is to produce new knowledge, rather than to present the existing knowledge in a new form (e.g., summarized or classified).

  3. Wikipedia:Researching with Wikipedia

    Citation of Wikipedia in research papers has been known to result in a failing grade. [2] [3] [4] This does not mean Wikipedia is not useful: Wikipedia articles contain many links to newspaper articles, books (often with ISBN numbers), radio programming, television shows, Web-based sources, and the like.

  4. How to Write a Research Paper

    To write a research paper, start by researching your topic at the library, online, or using an academic database. As you conduct your research and take notes, zero in on a specific topic that you want to write about and create a 1-2 sentence thesis to state the focus of your paper. Then, create an outline that includes an introduction, 3 to 5 ...

  5. A step-by-step guide for using Wikipedia for research communication

    In this way, Wikipedia provides one of the most straightforward and effective means to share knowledge and to leverage research findings towards societal impact. Engaging with the vibrant community of co-editors on Wikipedia is also not a one-way street but in turn can broaden one's horizon and potentially inspire future research.

  6. Twenty years of Wikipedia in scholarly publications: a bibliometric

    Wikipedia has grown to be the biggest online encyclopedia in terms of comprehensiveness, reach and coverage. However, although different websites and social network platforms have received considerable academic attention, Wikipedia has largely gone unnoticed. In this study, we fill this research gap by investigating how Wikipedia is used in scholarly publications since its launch in 2001. More ...

  7. Two decades of Wikipedia research: a PubMed bibliometric network

    Design/methodology/approach. Wikipedia has grown to be the biggest online encyclopedia in terms of comprehensiveness, reach and coverage. Based on 1,040 PubMed Wikipedia documents written by 5,280 authors over two decades (2001-2021), this paper conducts a bibliometric review of the intellectual structure of scholarly publications dealing ...

  8. A Student's Guide to Using Wikis

    This article is about how you—and your fellow students—can use wikis to help write essays and conduct academic research. To make things easier, we've divided it into two sections. First, we'll talk about how to use wikis to conduct research. Then we'll talk briefly about using wikis to actually help you write your project.

  9. How to Cite a Wikipedia Article

    How to cite Wikipedia in APA Style. In APA Style ( 7th edition ), only the first word of the title is capitalized, and there is no period after the URL. The in-text citation includes the title of the article (with title-case capitalization, and shortened if necessary) and the year. Example: APA Wikipedia citation. APA format.

  10. Wikipedia:Academic use

    Wikipedia is increasingly used by people in the academic community, from first-year students to distinguished professors, as an easily accessible tertiary source for information about anything and everything and as a quick "ready reference", to get a sense of a concept or idea. However, citation of Wikipedia in research papers may be considered ...

  11. Wiki Journal Club

    Wiki Journal Club. In patients with acute myocardial infarction (MI) complicated by cardiogenic shock found to have multivessel CAD on angiography, is multivessel percutaneous coronary intervention (PCI) superior to culprit-only PCI? Wiki Journal Club ( WJC) summarizes and reviews landmark studies across medicine and surgical specialties.

  12. Online Research: Wikipedia References

    Wikipedia's References. As we can see from the pros and cons list, while you don't want to use Wikipedia.org websites as a source for a research paper, the articles may help you get started by providing an easy-to-read introduction of a topic. Even more useful, the articles might have references to sources that ARE acceptable.

  13. How to Use Wikipedia For Research Papers

    For most assignments, your instructor will want you to use sources other than encyclopedias. Wikipedia, like other encyclopedias, can be a good starting point for your research. Always use your judgment when deciding whether to use any source. The best sources come from universities, government agencies, and peer-reviewed journals.

  14. Google Scholar

    Google Scholar provides a simple way to broadly search for scholarly literature. Search across a wide variety of disciplines and sources: articles, theses, books, abstracts and court opinions.

  15. Is Wikipedia a credible source?

    Although Wikipedia is a good place to start your research, it is not a credible source you should cite in your research papers. Wikipedia allows all kinds of different users to edit, and it is not safe to assume that the facts presented there have been checked before publishing them. Wikipedia's policy does say that references should be used ...

  16. Google Scholar

    Google Scholar is a freely accessible web search engine that indexes the full text or metadata of scholarly literature across an array of publishing formats and disciplines. Released in beta in November 2004, the Google Scholar index includes peer-reviewed online academic journals and books, conference papers, theses and dissertations, preprints, abstracts, technical reports, and other ...

  17. How to Build a Paper Research Wiki

    Applying the Technique to Your Paper. For a standard college research paper, I would suggest the following information hierarchy (this is only a suggestion, feel free to modify as needed): Have your primary sources include the actual primary sources: books, articles, interviews. Create one page for each such source.

  18. Wiki Papers

    WikiPapers will be a wiki library for (eventually all) published research papers from peer-reviewed scientific journals. Online bibliographies are an indispensible tool for researchers these days. This is where people go when they want to find a paper and information about it. As a wiki this is much more than just a list of published papers.

  19. Internet Archive Scholar

    Search Millions of Research Papers. This fulltext search index includes over 35 million research articles and other scholarly documents preserved in the Internet Archive. The collection spans from digitized copies of eighteenth century journals through the latest Open Access conference proceedings and preprints crawled from the World Wide Web.

  20. Wikipedia

    Download Wikipedia for Android or iOS Save your favorite articles to read offline, sync your reading lists across devices and customize your reading experience with the official Wikipedia app. Google Play Store; Apple App Store; Commons Freely usable photos & more. Wikivoyage Free travel guide.

  21. Help : Wikipedia editing for researchers, scholars, and academics

    Experts without an academic background may prefer Help:Wikipedia editing for non-academic experts. This help page is a how-to guide. It details processes or procedures of some aspect (s) of Wikipedia's norms and practices. It is not one of Wikipedia's policies or guidelines, and may reflect varying levels of consensus and vetting.

  22. List of academic databases and search engines

    Research papers from more than 55 disciplines Free & Subscription No Elsevier: HAL: Multidisciplinary: 760,000 (2,000,000 metadata) An open-access database for French researchers. Organized into institution and domain portals. Free Yes CNRS's Centre pour la Communication Scientifique Directe (CCSD) RePEc: Research Papers in Economics: Economics