Wikipedia's Role in Science Education and Outreach

Wikipedia's Role in Science Education and Outreach - scientific work related to Wikipedia quality published in 2007, written by Mark B. Moldwin, N. Gross and T. Miller.

Overview

Where do most students get information about space science topics? An informal survey of 300 University of California, Los Angeles freshmen indicates that Wikipedia is their first stop when researching essentially any topic. One third of student pre-service science teachers in a Boston University natural sciences course cited Wikipedia as a reference in their class reports on planetary exploration. A survey of Google® Web-page rankings of 20 major topics in space physics (including aurora, space weather, solar wind, etc.) found that the Wikipedia entry was on the first page for 16, was in the top three for 11, and was the highest-ranked site for six topics (magnetic reconnection, solar variation, Van Allen Radiation Belts, ionosphere, sudden ionospheric disturbance, and magnetometer).