Download full text
(1.195Mb)
Citation Suggestion
Please use the following Persistent Identifier (PID) to cite this document:
https://nbn-resolving.org/urn:nbn:de:0168-ssoar-81439-4
Exports for your reference manager
"I updated the <ref>": The evolution of references in the English Wikipedia and the implications for altmetrics
[journal article]
Abstract With this work, we present a publicly available data set of the history of all the references (more than 55 million) ever used in the English Wikipedia until June 2019. We have applied a new method for identifying and monitoring references in Wikipedia, so that for each reference we can provide data... view more
With this work, we present a publicly available data set of the history of all the references (more than 55 million) ever used in the English Wikipedia until June 2019. We have applied a new method for identifying and monitoring references in Wikipedia, so that for each reference we can provide data about associated actions: creation, modifications, deletions, and reinsertions. The high accuracy of this method and the resulting data set was confirmed via a comprehensive crowdworker labeling campaign. We use the data set to study the temporal evolution of Wikipedia references as well as users’ editing behavior. We find evidence of a mostly productive and continuous effort to improve the quality of references: There is a persistent increase of reference and document identifiers (DOI, PubMedID, PMC, ISBN, ISSN, ArXiv ID) and most of the reference curation work is done by registered humans (not bots or anonymous editors). We conclude that the evolution of Wikipedia references, including the dynamics of the community processes that tend to them, should be leveraged in the design of relevance indexes for altmetrics, and our data set can be pivotal for such an effort.... view less
Keywords
Wikipedia; source of information; data quality; data; monitoring
Classification
Scientometrics, Bibliometrics, Informetrics
Information and Documentation, Libraries, Archives
Interactive, electronic Media
Free Keywords
altmetrics; data set; edit histories; Wikipedia editors; Wikipedia references
Document language
English
Publication Year
2022
Page/Pages
p. 147-173
Journal
Quantitative Science Studies, 3 (2022) 1
DOI
https://doi.org/10.1162/qss_a_00171
ISSN
2641-3337
Status
Published Version; peer reviewed