Jennifer Dawson works with Cochrane’s Knowledge Translation Department as a Wikipedia Consultant. Her role includes maintaining and building further relations with Wikipedia, connecting new editors to the Wikipedia community, and supporting requests for engagement in Wikipedia work from the Cochrane community
Attention Cochrane contributors and consumers! If you utilize or contribute to Cochrane Evidence on a regular basis, why not take it one step further and share Cochrane Evidence to improve the 40,000 health-related Wikipedia articles?
Sharing evidence on Wikipedia has the potential to reach a large number of people around the world. English health-related content on Wikipedia was viewed over 2.2 billion times in 2017, and health content in all languages on Wikipedia receives approximately 10-million page views a day.
The Cochrane-Wikipedia Partnership was formed in 2014. Presently over 2000 Cochrane Reviews add to the evidence base of Wikipedia articles. The quality of Wikipedia is improving, but there are still thousands of Cochrane Reviews that contain health-related knowledge to share on Wikipedia.
Did your professors and mentors tell you to never use Wikipedia? Did you know that hundreds of medical professionals and researchers from around the world contribute to and maintain Wikipedia on a regular basis? The health-related articles have guidelines (i.e.: WP:MEDRS and WP:MEDMOS) to ensure that knowledge shared is unbiased and reliable. In addition to the human volunteers, “bots” are constantly scanning content to ensure the integrity of articles is maintained.
How can you get involved?
- Learn to edit Wikipedia at our upcoming Wikipedia editing session and Edit-a-thon at the Cochrane Colloquium in Edinburgh: Tuesday 18 September 2018: 14:00 to 15:30
- Learn from other Cochrane-Wikipedia projects and contribute your ideas at the Cochrane Colloquium Wikipedia Special Session: Sunday 16 September 2018: 16:00 to 17:30
- If you are not attending the Colloquium, we have two Cochrane-Wikipedia projects that are set up for volunteers to begin contributing immediately.
- Add New Evidence to Wikipedia: Choose a Cochrane Review from our list of Reviews that are not yet in Wikipedia (or from the Cochrane Library) > find a place in Wikipedia where this evidence will help improve the article > paraphrase the evidence into your own words using terminology that can be understood by people who are not in the field > click “edit” and add the evidence (with the Cochrane citation) to Wikipedia > Press submit.
- Keeping Cochrane on Wikipedia up to date: Cochrane-Wikipedia bot project (please see the project page for more information)
If you have any questions or want to get involved, please contact me directly at jdawson@cochrane.org
Jennifer Dawson, PhD
Wikipedia Consultant for Cochrane
JenOttawa (Wikipedia)