- Of the 18,000 new Wikipedia articles on chemistry added between 2001 and 2015, there is a positive correlation between Wikipedia articles and scientific literature 
- Strong correlation between use of words in Wikipedia and scientific publications
- Positive and statistically significant coefficient for “After” shows a correlation between the introduction of new scientific knowledge in Wikipedia and increased discussion in scientific publications

Science is shaped by wikipedia correlation

- Edit history of every Wikipedia article from the very beginning for 5.1 million articles, 353 million edits, and 17.4 billion words
- Full-text versions of 50 scientific journals, or 745,000 articles on chemistry, from Elsevier all published after 2000 and 27,000 Wikipedia articles about chemistry-related subjects

University of Michigan - Ann Arbor

Correlation between Wikipedia articles and research contributions in science, specifically chemistry in this study, shows that Wikipedia is most commonly used as a reference tool

Science is shaped by wikipedia: Evidence from a randomized control trial

Thompson, N., & Hanley, D. (2018). Science is shaped by wikipedia: Evidence from a randomized control trial. https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3039505. 

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