“Wikipedia for Researchers: Building reliable knowledge through citations” is a new free course on WikiLearn! Co-developed by Kath Burton, Carlos Areia, and Asaf Bartov, it brings together expertise in academic publishing, data science, and Wikipedia’s editorial culture to help researchers engage responsibly and effectively.
Why this course?
Wikipedia is one of the most common starting points to gain a deeper understanding of a variety of topics. Students, journalists, policymakers, and increasingly the AI systems shaping public knowledge all turn to it every day. Yet a considerable number of academic researchers have never contributed to the encyclopedia and many academic disciplines remain under-represented.
This gap has real consequences. Fields that are poorly cited on Wikipedia are harder for the public to discover, harder for AI systems to represent accurately, and harder for researchers to establish credibility beyond their own disciplines.
A 2025 peer-reviewed study shared the findings of the first large-scale survey of published authors inquiring about the experience of having their work cited on Wikipedia. The findings were encouraging: most published authors held a positive sentiment towards Wikipedia. They regard it as an important gateway that helps readers discover their work and at the same time, they’re able to identify the limitations it entails.
“…as researchers are primarily engaging with Wikipedia as a teaching and research tool, there may be opportunities to encourage specialist researcher-authors to update Wikipedia articles where they have expertise and as such improve the accuracy of citations in Wikipedia”
-Areia C, Burton K, Taylor M, Watkinson C (2025) Research citations building trust in Wikipedia: Results from a survey of published authors
The study pointed to a clear opportunity for us: researchers are open to actively engage, and Wikipedia needs them to. We seek to offer a structured, accessible pathway to make that happen.
What we built
“Wikipedia for Researchers” is a free, self-paced online course hosted on WikiLearn, the Wikimedia Foundation’s online learning platform. The course brings together the expertise of Kath Burton (Radically Hopeful / Center for Humanities Communication), Carlos Areia (Digital Science), and Asaf Bartov (Wikimedia Foundation). Through a collaborative partnership, they have built a curriculum that takes learners from understanding to action across three practical questions:
- How is research represented on Wikipedia? Learners trace citations in their own field and examine how scholarly knowledge is represented on Wikipedia.
- Can Wikipedia really be trusted? Learners examine how Wikipedia builds reliability through verifiable citations, shared editorial policies, and a distributed volunteer community. We consider why that matters now more than ever as AI systems increasingly draw on Wikipedia as a foundational knowledge source.
- How can academics make Wikipedia more reliable? Learners move from understanding to practice, exploring editing tools, navigating common pitfalls like conflict of interest and self-promotion, and making their first contribution with confidence.
The course takes approximately 4 hours to complete and requires no prior Wikipedia editing experience. While the course is designed for researchers, anybody interested in the topics covered is welcome to join. In the words of one of our first participants:
“I think this would be a great way for early career academics and researchers to use their time to help their field and the humanities and social sciences to be understood by a wider audience with the most reliable information that the researcher knows. It’s a way to be transparent with the wider community and be reproducible in providing an accurate citation.”
Join us!
Enroll today and help make Wikipedia a more reliable reflection of what your field knows! “Wikipedia for Researchers” is free and open to anyone with a WikiLearn account. If you work with early-career researchers, teach in an academic institution, or support open knowledge communities, we invite you to share this course widely! To learn more about the course or get in touch with the team, contact us via [email protected]
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