WikiProject Medicine

WikiProject Medicine, formed in 2004, is a WikiProject on Wikipedia dedicated to improving coverage of medicine-related topics.[1][2][3] Data from 2011 and 2016 suggested that about half of the volunteers were health care professionals or students.[1][2] The project has established contacts with organizations such as World Health Organization, National Institutes of Health, United States National Library of Medicine, and Cancer Research UK, and created several Wikipedian in residence programs at medical institutions.[3]

Wikipedia;WikiProject Medicine
PurposeMedical editing

According to a review written by a Wikipedia contributor and advocate,[lower-alpha 1][lower-alpha 2] as of 2020, Wikipedia is among the world's most accessed resources for health information by the public, patients, students, and practitioners.[4]

History

A 2011 review of the project's efforts praised it for assessing most medical articles on Wikipedia (at that time about 25,000), at the same time remarking that only around 70 have been assessed as high quality. The reviewer also suggested improvements to the Wikipedia system, such as making article assessment more prominent to the readers, and requesting that reviewers leave notes on how to improve low quality articles.[1]

A 2016 review written by Wikipedians[lower-alpha 3] stated that the number of high quality articles had improved to about 80.[5] The review praised the efforts of the volunteers, but said that participation levels are too low to promise any significant improvements in the thousands of lower-quality articles, calling for more medical practitioners to volunteer.[5] The review also said that readability (complexity) of Wikipedia articles may be too high for its intended audience, and encouraged the Wikipedia volunteers to review this aspect.[3]

The first use of Wikipedia medical content in formal medical education was in 2011.[4] A 2014 study found that the frequency of Wikipedia medical topics referenced in medical publications has increased over time since 2010, in spite of recommendations discouraging doctors from using Wikipedia, with the majority provided as definitions or descriptions.[6]

In 2012, an American NGO, Wiki Project Med Foundation (WPMEDF), was formed.[2][3][5][lower-alpha 4]

COVID-19 pandemic
See also: Wikipedia coverage of the COVID-19 pandemic

CBS News described the role of WikiProject Medicine in content about the COVID-19 pandemic, stating that while "hot topics that get a lot of page views are carefully edited, inaccurate information persists on some of Wikipedia's less-read pages".[7] James Heilman told CBS News, "I do not recommend people trust Wikipedia blindly. I think doing so would be silly. Yet, you know, people shouldn't trust other sources of information blindly, either."[7]

Notes
  1. The author is a Wikipedia contributor and advocates for Wikipedia authorship to health workers, students, and faculty at McMaster University."[4]
  2. "The Author declared in the cover letter being awarded a grant from the Wikimedia Foundation whose funding would cover this publication if accepted. Financial Disclosure section and Competing Interests section should be updated accordingly (in competing interests, I believe Author could specify having obtained the grant -after- completing and submitting this work)".[4]
  3. "Competing interests: All authors have contributed to Wikipedia articles. TS, DD, MH and JH are current participants in WP:MED. JH is a former and current member of the Wikimedia Foundation board of trustees. All authors are on the editorial board of WikiJournal of Medicine. TS is on the editorial board of PLOS Genetics."[5]
  4. The article processing fee was covered by a rapid grant from the Wikimedia Foundation. The Foundation had no involvement in the study design, the collection, analysis and interpretation of the data, writing the report, or in the decision to submit the manuscript for publication.[5]

References
  1. Trevena, L. (2011-06-08). "WikiProject Medicine". BMJ. 342 (jun08 3): d3387. doi:10.1136/bmj.d3387. ISSN 0959-8138. PMID 21653617. S2CID 206893220.
  2. James, Richard (October 2016). "WikiProject Medicine: Creating Credibility in Consumer Health". Journal of Hospital Librarianship. 16 (4): 344–351. doi:10.1080/15323269.2016.1221284. ISSN 1532-3269. S2CID 79020792.
  3. Murray, Terry (2015-03-03). "WikiProject Medicine making progress". Canadian Medical Association Journal. 187 (4): 245. doi:10.1503/cmaj.109-4982. ISSN 0820-3946. PMC 4347770. PMID 25646285.
  4. Smith DA (2020). "Situating Wikipedia as a health information resource in various contexts: A scoping review". PLOS ONE. 15 (2): e0228786. Bibcode:2020PLoSO..1528786S. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0228786. PMC 7028268. PMID 32069322.
  5. Shafee, Thomas; Masukume, Gwinyai; Kipersztok, Lisa; Das, Diptanshu; Häggström, Mikael; Heilman, James (2017-11-01). "Evolution of Wikipedia's medical content: past, present and future". J Epidemiol Community Health. 71 (11): 1122–1129. doi:10.1136/jech-2016-208601. ISSN 0143-005X. PMC 5847101. PMID 28847845.
  6. Bould MD, Hladkowicz ES, Pigford AA, Ufholz LA, Postonogova T, Shin E, Boet S (March 2014). "References that anyone can edit: review of Wikipedia citations in peer reviewed health science literature". BMJ. 348: g1585. doi:10.1136/bmj.g1585. PMC 3944683. PMID 24603564.
  7. Laudato, Anthony (May 24, 2020). "The rise of Wikipedia as a source of medical information". CBS News. Retrieved April 3, 2023.
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