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‘Tis the season for final papers and exams. As time grows short in the semester, I’ve seen more of my graduate students cite Wikipedia in their papers.

Some students have noticed that I cite Wikipedia in my blog posts. I include links to Wikipedia so that students can find a quick, reasonable discussion of a specific topic.

But that doesn’t mean that I will let graduate students cite Wikipedia in their assignments. I wouldn’t let undergraduate students cite Wikipedia, but I do hold graduate students to a higher set of standards. Masters students should be able to find, assess and use reliable, authoritative references for their assignments.

Here’s a good response on this issue. Jorge shares my opinion that the reference lists in some Wikipedia articles can be a good source of reading material for students. This practice is similar to using the reference list of a good textbook or an academic article to find additional readings on a topic. I encourage students to do this, as long as students find, read and cite the sources.

Wikipedia is not a textbook, dictionary or paper encylcopedia. Wikipedia is a user-created database of articles on a wide variety of topics. As I’ve mentioned on 7 March, Wikipedia is, at best, a tertiary or third-level reference. Wikipedia articles should not include any original, primary or first-level research.

That means that all Wikipedia articles should be based on secondary research.

TurnItIn.com does check student papers against Wikipedia articles, which helps deter students from using Wikipedia as a reference. Jessica Farris wrote a brief article on QuestionCopyright.org in which she mentioned some of the deterrent qualities of TurnItIn.com. Bill Zeller discussed the legal status of TurnItIn.com’s indexing in this article in one of his course blogs. Zeller also refers to this 13 March 2007 BusinessWeek article about TurnItIn.com.