Wikipedia requires that information included in an article was published by a reliable source. While this is often an important element to confirm something is true or correct, it can be limiting for topics that have not received coverage in newspapers or scholarly journals. For some topics, such as Indigenous peoples of Canada, an oral history may be an important source, but it could not be cited in a Wikipedia article.

3. Not all cited sources are open-access

Some sources may be behind paywalls, and since citations drive traffic and revenue, academic publishers have a vested interest in their publications’ being cited, whether or not they are freely available. However, college students can use their school’s library to get full text access to the sources they discover in Wikipedia articles.

4. Articles change frequently

While timely updates are an advantage of Wikipedia, the impermanence of articles can make them difficult to rely on for information. Students can keep track of the date they find a piece of information on Wikipedia as it might not be the same when they return. The “Talk” page of a Wikipedia entry provides a discussion of changes to the article, and the Internet Archive Wayback Machine can be used to view previous versions.

This article is republished from The Conversation, an independent nonprofit news site dedicated to sharing ideas from academic experts. If you found it interesting, you could subscribe to our weekly newsletter.

Read more:
Wikipedia at 20: Why it often overlooks stories of women in history

Using Wikipedia: a scholar redraws academic lines by including it in his syllabus

The authors do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.