Comparison of Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy and Wikipedia Articles’ References: In Search of Evidence for Wikipedia Credibility

In search of evidence for Wikipedia credibility, this study aims to compare and analyze articles’ references of Wikipedia and Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. This research approach is quantitative and has been done using bibliometric methods and citation analysis. The statistical sample of the research were 5% of the SEP entries (84 from 1685) and their equals on Wikipedia. The samples were selected randomly and systematically, then their references were analyzed and compared. The findings showed that the frequency of SEP references was about 3.5 times more than Wikipedia. The overlap of two encyclopedia’s references was 2.47% of the total references. The half-life of the SEP references was significantly longer than Wikipedia. In both encyclopedias, the main resources which were used included books, journals, and websites. Regarding language of references, most of the references of both encyclopedias was in English, and citations to other language resources in both encyclopedias were almost similar. The percentage of open access and inaccessible resources on Wikipedia was higher than the SEP, while the percentage of non-open access references in the SEP was higher than Wikipedia. Finally, a comparison of the citations received by the two encyclopedia articles’ references showed that the citations received by Wikipedia references were significantly higher than SEP. This article compares the similarity of two known encyclopedias through comparison of their entities’ references. Despite the similarities in the referencing pattern of the two encyclopedias, their information content comes from different resources and comparison articles’ references of Wikipedia with SEP provide no evidence for Wikipedia’s credibility.

Keywords: Wikipedia, Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, References, Credibility.