Wikipedia is one of the most popular online encyclopedias found today and is commonly used to get a basic understanding on a specific topic. Since its formation, there have been many arguments stating that Wikipedia should not be used as an academic source at a tertiary level. Such arguments include the fact that Wikipedia is open for adjustment by anyone with access to the internet; and another being that falsified data may have been used in creation of the article.
Wikipedia is a free online encyclopedia that is open to public alteration, which therefore brings into question the credibility of the articles within. A study by Chesney (2006) was conducted to assess the reliability of Wikipedia. Fifty-five academics were chosen and separated into two groups. The…show more content… A study was conducted comparing 100 randomly selected drugs from a university’s base pharmacology course material, to the drug information found on the German language version of Wikipedia (Kräenbring et al, 2015). Results found that factual errors were below 0.3% and approximately 97% of the drug information on Wikipedia was classified vital to the basic pharmacology curriculum being taught, these results were similar to the English version of wikipedia. One reason the percentage rate for drug accuracy could be higher is due to the University of California, located in San Francisco. University of California San Francisco became one of the first medical school that enabled students to gain academic credit by amending medical data on Wikipedia (UCSF, 2013). Similarly, 15 universities have offered a credit in a Feminism and Technology course for introducing a feminist opinion within Wikipedia (Fox News, 2013). If this form of educating students persists in popularity, the accuracy rate over these particular categories within Wikipedia will improve