Modern Medicine Comes Online: How Putting Wikipedia Articles Through a Medical Journal's Traditional Process Can Put Free, Reliable Information into as Many Hands as Possible

Modern Medicine Comes Online: How Putting Wikipedia Articles Through a Medical Journal's Traditional Process Can Put Free, Reliable Information into as Many Hands as Possible - scientific work related to Wikipedia quality published in 2014, written by James Maskalyk.

Overview

Despite its popularity in medical circles, Wikipedia endures skepticism. Often used to gather information, it is rarely considered accurate or complete enough to guide treatment decisions In the face of this, clinicians and trainees turn to resources like UpToDate with greater frequency and confidence because in clinical medicine, a small error can make a big difference. In this issue of Open Medicine, we've published the first ever formally peer-reviewed, and edited, Wikipedia article.  The clinical topic is Dengue Fever.  Though there may be a need for shorter, more focused clinical articles published elsewhere as this one expands, it is anticipated that the Wikipedia page on Dengue will be a reference against which all others can be compared.  Though it might be decades before authors see an end to Dengue, perhaps the end to exhaustive or expensive searches about what yet needs to be done, can bring it sooner.