Which Type of Research is Cited More Often in Wikipedia? A Case Study of PubMed Research

Paper in proceeding, 2018

This study examines the characteristics of medical articles cited in Wikipedia and compares them with a sample of medical articles not cited in the platform. The aim is to determine the reasons why some articles are selected as reliable sources for Wikipedia and others are not. The characteristics studied are document type, open access status of article, article topic, article F1000 class and F1000 count, article tweet count, and article news count. The findings show a document type similarity for both cited and uncited sets of articles, with articles, reviews and editorial materials being more visible in both sets. While the articles cover a broad range of topics, the top three topics are the same in both sets. The results also reveal that Wikipedia favors OA articles, although a large number of cited articles are non-OA. Finally, significant, although weak correlations are found between Wiki citation counts and F1000, tweet and news counts. While F1000 and tweet counts correlate negatively with Wikipedia citation counts, news counts show a positive correlation, although the weakest compared to the other correlations.