Article type
Year
Abstract
Background: Wikipedia is accessed every day by people all over the globe. Cochrane has recognised it as a key tool for dissemination of evidence and is working with Wikipedia. How many existing Wikipedia pages are suitable for insertion of evidence from any given Cochrane Review, however? All Cochrane Schizophrenia reviews may fit into the page on ‘Management of Schizophrenia’, however such seeding of general pages with huge amounts of evidence would defeat the purpose of provision of succinct information.
Objectives: To investigate how many of the 200 Cochrane Schizophrenia reviews have a Wikipedia page that is both specific enough, and appropriate, upon which, to ‘land’ evidence.
Methods:
1. Reviews with an obvious Wikipedia ‘home’ were counted.
2. Reviews with Wikipedia pages that were relevant, but less appropriate for insertion of evidence – in which, for example, the intervention was mentioned only briefly among others – were identified as potentials.
3. Reviews with no obvious Wikipedia page were also identified.
4. Finally, in the expectation that the 'Summary of findings' table of the Cochrane Review would be the source of evidence inserted, the number of reviews with such a table were counted.
Results: Out of 200 reviews, 97 (49%) had an obvious Wikipedia ‘landing’ page, a further 47 (24%) were associated with a page that was of potential relevance but was less appropriate, and 56 (28%) reviews had no obvious Wikipedia ‘home’. Of those 144 (72%) Cochrane Reviews with at least a potential Wikipedia ‘landing’ site, 76 (53%) had 'Summary of findings' table(s).
Conclusions: Creating new pages for the 56 ‘homeless’ reviews would be time consuming. Making pages more suitable where necessary for the 47 reviews with a relevant, but not fully appropriate, ‘landing’ would require less work. The remaining reviews, however, simply require the insertion of a table into Wikipedia.
This means that many of Cochrane’s reviews are Wiki-compatible right now - and this is very promising with regard to Wikipedia’s potential as a powerful tool for the dissemination of evidence produced by Cochrane, not just Cochrane Schizophrenia.
Objectives: To investigate how many of the 200 Cochrane Schizophrenia reviews have a Wikipedia page that is both specific enough, and appropriate, upon which, to ‘land’ evidence.
Methods:
1. Reviews with an obvious Wikipedia ‘home’ were counted.
2. Reviews with Wikipedia pages that were relevant, but less appropriate for insertion of evidence – in which, for example, the intervention was mentioned only briefly among others – were identified as potentials.
3. Reviews with no obvious Wikipedia page were also identified.
4. Finally, in the expectation that the 'Summary of findings' table of the Cochrane Review would be the source of evidence inserted, the number of reviews with such a table were counted.
Results: Out of 200 reviews, 97 (49%) had an obvious Wikipedia ‘landing’ page, a further 47 (24%) were associated with a page that was of potential relevance but was less appropriate, and 56 (28%) reviews had no obvious Wikipedia ‘home’. Of those 144 (72%) Cochrane Reviews with at least a potential Wikipedia ‘landing’ site, 76 (53%) had 'Summary of findings' table(s).
Conclusions: Creating new pages for the 56 ‘homeless’ reviews would be time consuming. Making pages more suitable where necessary for the 47 reviews with a relevant, but not fully appropriate, ‘landing’ would require less work. The remaining reviews, however, simply require the insertion of a table into Wikipedia.
This means that many of Cochrane’s reviews are Wiki-compatible right now - and this is very promising with regard to Wikipedia’s potential as a powerful tool for the dissemination of evidence produced by Cochrane, not just Cochrane Schizophrenia.