By Sarah Young
Wikipedia is a tool widely used by policymakers and practitioners across fields when seeking research evidence for making decisions and developing programs. Due to research paywalls, a lack of access to subscription databases and perhaps inexperience in conducting effective literature searches, sources like Wikipedia are used heavily to quickly find primary and secondary literature and answers to policy questions.
Meanwhile, Campbell systematic reviews serve to uncover, assess and synthesize relevant literature otherwise hidden behind these paywalls or obscured in hard-to-find repositories. By adding references to Campbell reviews in Wikipedia articles, we can connect evidence-seekers more quickly to these treasure troves of comprehensive, yet well-summarised and critically appraised, research outputs.
The process is simple – we match Campbell reviews to appropriate Wikipedia articles.
The Campbell Information Retrieval Methods Group (IRMG) has begun an effort to add Campbell evidence to Wikipedia. The process is simple – we match recent and priority Campbell reviews to appropriate Wikipedia articles, and suggest or make edits with brief summaries of the findings drawn from the reviews’ plain language summaries.
This modest effort is based on Cochrane’s Wikipedia Project, which includes a partnership with Wikipedia and many volunteer editors. It has successfully added high-quality health evidence to Wikipedia since 2014, with well over 3,000 Cochrane reviews now referenced and cited.
Get involved – How you can help to make research evidence easier to find
The Campbell IRMG has just begun our efforts, and so far has added five reviews, starting with reviews from the International Development Coordinating Group. This is more than twice as many Campbell reviews as had been in Wikipedia before our efforts began, and we hope this number continues to grow as more people get involved.
If you are interested in joining this effort, please contact infospec@campbellcollaboration.org. Don’t worry if you have no experience with Wikipedia editing – we’d be happy to get you started. This is a great opportunity to contribute to making global policymaking and decisionmaking more evidence-based!
Sarah Young is a Librarian and Liaison to Heinz College, Social & Decision Sciences, Information Systems, Institute for Politics & Strategy and Statistics & Data Science at Carnegie Mellon University Libraries. She is also Co-convener of the Campbell Information Retrieval Methods Group.