Staff Member #1
Katherine Burton
Wikipedia for Researchers: Building Reliable Knowledge Through Citations
WikimediaFoundation
About This Course
Every day, millions of students, journalists, policymakers, researchers, and curious minds turn to Wikipedia for information. And increasingly, so do the AI systems that mediate how knowledge is discovered and trusted across the web. Yet most academic researchers have never contributed to Wikipedia. Some assume it isn't credible enough to engage with. Others simply don't know how. The result is a gap: a publicly trusted resource that is underserved by the very community best positioned to strengthen it. This course is designed to close that gap.
What will you learn?
Wikipedia for Researchers equips early-career researchers with the knowledge and practical skills to contribute peer-reviewed citations to Wikipedia responsibly, critically, and with lasting impact. Across three thematic sections, you will explore: Research representation on Wikipedia - how scholarly knowledge appears, circulates, and is evaluated in one of the world's most read reference sources, and what that means for how your own research is discovered and trusted. Trust, reliability, and digital knowledge - how Wikipedia's quality controls and citation practices work, and why they matter in an era when AI systems increasingly draw on public knowledge infrastructure to generate and mediate information. Citations in practice - hands-on activities in which you trace, evaluate, and add real academic references to Wikipedia articles, building the practical skills to contribute confidently and responsibly to the encyclopedia.
Who is this course for?
This course is designed for early-career researchers (PhD students, postdoctoral researchers, and early-stage academics) who want to engage with public knowledge responsibly and demonstrate the real-world relevance of their scholarly work. Basic familiarity with Wikipedia and its 5 pillars is required for this course - you can review your knowledge here!
Instructors
Carlos Areia
Biography of instructor/staff member #2
Asaf Bartov
Biography of instructor/staff member #3
Frequently Asked Questions
What web browser should I use?
The Open edX platform works best with current versions of Chrome, Edge, Firefox, Internet Explorer, or Safari.
See our list of supported browsers for the most up-to-date information.
Question #2
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