Hi dear Reiner

Wikipedia is good for finding valuable informations about certain topics but itself use from published articles and it is better to cite those articles not to the wikipedia.

Cheers

My answer is a very strong NO - wiki entries are not reliable scientific sources, e.g. there is no real peer-review process.

I agree that wikipedia is a poor secondary source for citation. By no means should we rely on this source alone for any affirmation. However, there is no reason to think some threads form Wikipedia are not just as good as published secondary literature which is often not peer reviewed either.

Wikipedia is a dynamic source of information modulated by many users. Therefore, one information can be there one day and disappear the next. Nevertheless, in the historic, all changes to a thread are traced. It is therefore possible to find sources even if meanwhile they have been changed.

So I think wikipedia should be citable but only if the precise date and hour of the time the information was collected is also provided.

Wikipedia cannot however be considered by the scientific community as a solide source of knowledge and I would advice to only cite this source if reasons can be provided for not finding the same information elsewhere in primary literature, peer reviewed literature reviews or edited textbooks.

We need to account for rapid changes in technologies and social interactions. None of us can predict what will be the scientific position towards Wikipedia in 20 years of time. It is a very new source of knowledge, and many of us do not know how to use it.

Wikipedia is not only what Justyana or Julia make it out to be. Inputs are peer reviewed by everyone! Furthermore, to add, change, or replace an information you need to provide your contact and if someone does not agree with your point, you are notified of changes. Moderators verify that things do not get out of hand. All changes are traceable. If an author puts a text back, he is supposed to justify it in the discussion section. It is therefore possible to identify sources of controversies and underlying conceptual groundings that explain these differences in opinion. These information are rarely provided in traditional sources of secondary literature.

Therefore, Wikipedia is not only about reading the main article, it is also about learning to read all what is behind. It is very informative to go and have a look at the discussion section. Wikipedia provides an alternative insight to knowledge construction that is often not offered by other sources. As such, I consider it can be used in scientific literature if it is cited correctly and that it covers this specific aspect of knowledge.

So even if I agree that further transparency on author identification is required in wikipedia, I would not go as far as to say that this is a justifiable reason for not been able to cite it. I find Artur's position clearer. If we cannot cite Wikipedia, then lets not cite any secondary literature.

Not recommended,

Although it is a very good source for value able information but it is a dynamic source, The information available on Wikipedia changes on daily basis. so it is not recommended to cite the Wikipedia source

I seriously doubt about any serious or prestigious journal accepting papers based only on wiki sources. I am and have been peer-reviewer for a number of journals and congresses. If I happen to get a paper based solely on wiki I would reject it. Luckily good editors go one step in advance and would for sure reject such a paper, avoiding thus a sad moment for the reviewers.

Interesting answers provided, and I would certainly agree that wikipedia is not an appropriate source for citation in any academic works - when teaching postgraduate students it is made very clear that by all means look at wikipedia, but never include it as a cited source! similar to other replies you have here, I have also acted as refer for a number of journals and would be very dubious if wikipedia was included as part of the referencing. Likewise, when marking thesis or dissertations, this would certainly be seen as a 'negative' and lead me to question and check other sources included.

Definitely not (as stated above). The Wikipedia provides a good picture of what society thinks or where society is moving, because some products are quite good while others are weak.

It is never acceptable to quote Wikipedia in any academic paper or essay unless the essay is about Wikipedia. To quote from this or a good few other web sources is very risky as a lot of false material is posted there. In serious, quality Wiki entries there will be a bibliography of sources. The correct thing to do is to seek out the original source, check its validity and quote from that. In all cases secondary sourcing, which is what Wiki is essentially is poor quality research. Academic rigour requires that the author carries out a detailed and exhaustive search of the literature.

No - Wikipedia is not an authoritative work, but one can use it to quickly find links to references which are.

I strongly disagree with most of the respondents. Let me ask them, does every one has access to paid services of renowned journals?

I follow what David does. Not referencing WIkis, but I check on refereed citations mentioned at the end of the articles and from there I move toward refereed journals. These are accessible Asmat even from Google if you have patience and good search techniques.