Teplitskiy M, Lu G, Duede E. Amplifying the impact of open access: Wikipedia and the diffusion of science. Journal of the Association for Information Science and Technology 2016;68(9):2116-2117)
(doi: 10.1002/asi.23687)
To understand whether Wikipedia draws upon the research that scientists value most, the authors identified the 250 most heavily used journals in each of 26 research fields indexed by the Scopus database, and tested whether topic, academic status, and accessibility make articles from these journals more or less likely to be referenced on Wikipedia. They found that a journal's academic status (impact factor) and accessibility (open access policy) both strongly increase the probability of it being referenced on Wikipedia. These findings provide evidence that a major consequence of open access policies is to significantly amplify the diffusion of science, through an intermediary like Wikipedia, to a broad audience.
http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/asi.23687/full
(doi: 10.1002/asi.23687)
To understand whether Wikipedia draws upon the research that scientists value most, the authors identified the 250 most heavily used journals in each of 26 research fields indexed by the Scopus database, and tested whether topic, academic status, and accessibility make articles from these journals more or less likely to be referenced on Wikipedia. They found that a journal's academic status (impact factor) and accessibility (open access policy) both strongly increase the probability of it being referenced on Wikipedia. These findings provide evidence that a major consequence of open access policies is to significantly amplify the diffusion of science, through an intermediary like Wikipedia, to a broad audience.
http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/asi.23687/full
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