Crowdsourcing Knowledge Interdiscursive Flows from Wikipedia into Scholarly Research

Information increasingly flows from smart online knowledge systems, based on ‘collective intelligence’, and to the more traditional form of knowledge production that takes place within academia. Looking specifically at the case of Wikipedia, and at how it is employed in scholarly research, this study contributes new knowledge about the potential role of user-generated information in science and innovation. This is done using a dataset collected from the Scopus research database, which is processed with a combination of bibliometric techniques and qualitative analysis. Results show that there has been a significant increase in the use of Wikipedia as a reference within all areas of science and scholarship. Wikipedia is used to a larger extent within areas like Computer Science, Mathematics, Social Sciences and Arts and Humanities, than in Natural Sciences, Medicine and Psychology. Wikipedia is used as a source for a variety of knowledge and information as a replacement for traditional reference works. A thematic qualitative analysis showed that Wikipedia knowledge is recontextualised in different ways when it is incorporated into scholarly discourse. In general, one can identify two forms of framing where one is unmodalised, and the other is modalised. The unmodalised uses include referring to Wikipedia as a complement or example, as a repository, and as an unproblematic source of information. The modalised use is characterised by the invocation of various markers that emphasise – in different ways – that Wikipedia can not be automatically trusted. It has not yet achieved full legitimacy as a source.


Introduction
This article analyses how information flows from so-called smart online knowledge systems -based on 'collective intelligence' (Lévy 1999) -and how this compares to the more traditional form of knowledge production that takes place within academia.Looking specifically at the case of Wikipedia and how it is employed in scholarly research, this study contributes to new knowledge about the potential role of user-generated information in science and innovation.The notion of collective intelligence is based on the idea that no single person knows everything but everyone knows something, and this collective knowledge can be harnessed through social media.People networking and sharing knowledge, experience and ideas results in a form of intelligence that, according to Lévy, is universally distributed, coordinated in real time, and constantly enhanced.This leads to an effective mobilisation of skills.
Modern digital culture makes all of us potential members of a shared virtual universe of knowledge, and the common fostering of this intelligence has the potential to make social ties the most important currency in future society.Collective intelligence, Lévy argues, can disrupt the power of government and can lead to a diversification of knowledge and creativity.Lévy argues that we will increasingly witness the development of skill zones that are 'fluid, delocalised, based on the singularities, and agitated by permanent molecular movements of association and rivalry' (Lévy 1999:5).The utopian result will be a form of real-time democracy where knowledge is no longer 'padlocked like a treasure' but instead 'pervades everything, is distributed, mediatised, spreads innovation wherever it is found' (Lévy 1999:212).This emerging knowledge system -'the cosmopedia'makes available 'to the collective intellect all of the pertinent knowledge available to it at a given moment, but it also serves as a site of collective discussion, negotiation, and development' (Lévy 1999: 217).
Other researchers have also pointed out similar processes of networked, nonprofit, and democratised knowledge production, including Rouse's (1991) notion of 'media circuits' as adapted by Lange (2008), Jones' (1997) concept of 'virtual settlements', Wenger's (1998) idea of 'communities of practice', and Gee's (2005) construct of 'affinity spaces'.Some of these are conceptualisations of how the 'fluid skill zones' are formed and structured, while others provide a terminology for the collaborative activities going on within them once they have been established.This conceptual redundancy -and there are certainly more terms to be found in the literature -is symptomatic of the field.A significant amount of effort has been made to name processes and patterns of online connection and engagement.It is natural for a wide array of conceptualisations to emerge in relation to new processes, and an attempt to bring the variety of overlapping theories together is needed.

Aim and Questions
While it is obvious that ICTs have the potential to dramatically transform processes of knowledge production, it is not clear how and to what extent this potential is realised.More research of real-world situations is needed.In this article, I investigate how and under what circumstances the potential that is inherent in ICT environments based on collective intelligence is, or is not, harnessed by traditional systems of knowledge production.This is done through a case study of Wikipedia and its relationship to the established scientific literature.Although -a usergenerated online encyclopaedia that anyone can edit or contribute to -is an interesting object of study in its own right (Rosenzweig 2006;Kittur, Suh, Pendleton & Chi 2007;Fallis 2008;G. W. Lovink & Tkacz 2011;Sumi, Yasseri, Rung, Kornai & Kertész 2011), the main focus here is on the actual interaction between these types of bottom-up knowledge systems and traditional and established forms of knowledge systems.A unique dataset collected from the Scopus research database and processed with a combination of bibliometric techniques and qualitative analysis was used to address the following issues in quantitative terms: 1. To what extent are Wikipedia articles used as references in peerreviewed academic research?2. In which academic disciplines is Wikipedia most commonly used? 3. What types of Wikipedia articles are referenced?After this general mapping, quantitative analysis was used to address the question of how knowledge that comes from Wikipedia is incorporated in academic discourses.This final and important question relates to the ways in which Wikipedia is used and whether or not it provides a contribution to scientific efforts that would not have been possible without a connection to collective intelligence.The overarching question has to do with whether the knowledge that can potentially flow from the social ICT platform to the academic community can be construed as merely listed information -stripped of inspiring or clarifying power -or as a powerful form of active information that can deepen and enrich the new context in which it is incorporated.

Wikipedia as a Source
One of the key characteristics of the current media landscape is the increased ability for users to create content of their own.Instead of a clear-cut division between producers and consumers, there is an increasing number of examples of 'prosumption' (Toffler 1980) and 'produsage' (Bruns 2008) as networked publics (Varnelis 2008) engage in participatory cultures (Jenkins 2006).As the cost and complexity of producing and circulating information has gone down following the development of so-called Web 2.0 technologies (Bell 2009), a much larger number of people have become involved in various forms of content creation compared to Culture Unbound, Volume 6, 2014 [611] just a few years ago.The crucial premise for much of the optimistic discourse surrounding this development (cf.Shirky 2008) is that the aggregated individual contributions will benefit the collective.As argued by Madden and Fox (2006), the new bottom-up forms can 'replace the authoritative heft of traditional institutions with the surging wisdom of crowds'.
Wikipedia can be defined in terms of what Rheingold wrote in 1994 about 'virtual communities'.It is based on the 'power of cooperation' and 'a merger of knowledge capital, social capital, and communion'.Such communities attract 'colonies of enthusiasts' because the digital platforms enable them 'to do things with each other in new ways, and to do altogether new kinds of things' (Rheingold 1994: xxi).A key aspect of this is the development and application of collective intelligence.Power, according to Lévy, 'is now conferred through the optimal management of knowledge whether it involves technology, science, communication, or our 'ethical' relationship with the other' (Lévy 1999: 1).
User-generated content appears in a variety of forms that range from the mere pooling or aggregation of information (e.g.collaborative filtering on sites like Amazon.com) to different broadcast models (Twitter or blogs) to interactive spaces (discussion forums or other types of collaborative platforms) (Flanagin & Metzger 2011).An important venue for such collectively produced information and knowledge is online encyclopaedias, of which Wikipedia is the prime example.Established in 2001, this openly editable encyclopaedia can 'rightfully claim to be the most successful example of online commons-based and oriented peer production' (O'Neil 2011: 309).As O'Neil claims, Wikipedia can be considered to be a mass project that has taken on several features of 'hacker' culture, the most prominent of which is the idea that management structures should be decentralised.
Wikipedia is, as of January 2014, the 6 th most visited site online (Alexa 2014) and has increasingly become an accepted source of information that is quoted online as well as in court cases, traditional media, and popular literature (Langlois & Elmer 2009).It is also increasingly referred to in academic books and papers.
This development has led to a debate over Wikipedia's trustworthiness and validity.Through its model of peer-production (Benkler 2006), it aspires to produce neutral points of view (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Neutral_point_of_view).The use of open source software and content further underscores Wikipedia's attempt to exist as a forum for the creation and circulation of knowledge and information that is outside of the capitalist mode of production.Langlois and Elmer (2009: 775) argue that because it 'relies on a collaborative process to produce knowledge rather than the credentials of experts, the Wikipedia model puts into question traditional processes for legitimizing truth claims, such as relying on expert knowledge rather than the wisdom of the crowd.' [612] Culture Unbound, Volume 6, 2014 While Wikipedia's collaborative model for knowledge production through the use of a multitude of anonymous contributors has been praised, the same model has also been criticised and questioned.Researchers have repeatedly shown that a small core of dedicated individuals, rather than the alleged crowd of participants, has produced and controlled much of the content, especially during the first five years of Wikipedia's existence (Niederer & van Dijck 2010).Because various groups of users have distinctly different levels of permission to edit content, the site has never been the 'mythical egalitarian space' (ibid.: 1384) that it is often described as.Graham (2011: 271) argues that Wikipedia is marked by 'uneven geographies, uneven directions, and uneven politics' and states that: The Wikipedia project has had unimaginable success in making freely provided information available to potentially anyone.However, the project is less successful in showing users where the gaps in representation lie.Part of this problem can be traced to the wording of Wikipedia's Neutral Point of View (NPOV) policy.The policy advises editors to 'assert facts, including facts about opinions -but [not to] assert the opinions themselves'.While this rule may function as an effective policy for many articles (e.g., fish anatomy, coliform bacteria, or Manchester City Football Club), it does not necessar[ily] work for articles about place.The countless ways of interpreting economic, social and political landscapes mean that articles that contribute to the palimpsests of place necessarily must only represent selective aspects of place in selective ways (ibid.: 279).
In addition to this, the credibility and reliability of Wikipedia has also been scrutinized.Francke and Sundin (2012), for example, have shown how on-going discussions about the credibility of participatory media are changing notions of what sources are suitable to use.Flanagin and Metzger (2011) have argued that many users are still not ready to leave traditional models of acquiring knowledge behind and that many people, especially those of older generations, still value expert-generated content more than its user-generated counterpart.Biddix et al. (2011), and studies referred to therein, have shown that college students often use Wikipedia as a key tool for their research process, but the site is also increasingly used as a source of reference material in academic research.

Wikipedia in Academia: General Mapping
For the purpose of this study, a dataset was created consisting of around 13 000 journal articles collected from the Scopus bibliographic database.The entire database -covering 19 500 journal titles from 5 000 different publishers -was queried for papers with the author 'Wikipedia' cited in their reference lists.In order to exclude articles about Wikipedia itself from the dataset, papers with 'Wikipedia' in their title, abstract, or keyword field were filtered out.A search was made for each year from 2003 to 2011, and key data about frequencies, research disciplines, and research areas were entered into a spreadsheet.While caution is required Culture Unbound, Volume 6, 2014 [613] when interpreting results from such small numbers, a steady increase in the use of Wikipedia as a reference can be seen.In all scientific areas, only one indexed paper per year included Wikipedia in its reference list in 2001 and 2002.As Wikipedia turned five years old in 2006, 1 445 articles per year referenced material from the site, and five years later in 2011 this number had increased to more than 9 000.
Figure 1 shows the percentages of papers per year in Scopus with one or more references to Wikipedia.
The occurrence of references to Wikipedia in scholarly research raises questions about how the collaborative knowledge building that takes place on this relatively open platform 'co-evolves' (Kimmerle et al. 2010) with the knowledge building that is going on within more traditional structures in academia.Langlois and Elmer (2009) have suggested that more research is needed on how the content on Wikipedia is circulated within, and incorporated into, other settings and how such appropriations might change the role of such content.Figure 2 shows a comparison of the annual increase (%) in the share of papers citing Wikipedia (grey), with the annual increase in the share of papers citing any other encyclopaedia (black).
While the pattern has been levelling out in recent years, the increase in Wikipedia citations was quite dramatic between 2003 -2007.
The next question to be addressed concerns in which academic disciplines Wikipedia is most commonly used.Figure 3 shows the percentages of papers within every subject area in the Scopus database that make one or more references to Wikipedia.This excludes, once again, articles that have Wikipedia itself as their subject matter.The general impression, which must be considered in relation to the increase in Wikipedia references illustrated in Figure 1, is that articles that cite Wikipedia are still in a clear minority ranging from around 1 to 8 out of every 1 000 articles within the respective fields of research.In Figure 3, traditionally positivist sciences (Natural Sciences, Medicine, etc.) display the lowest degree of Wikipedia citations while more interpretive areas like Social Science and Arts and Humanities tend to be found at the other end of the spectrum.Mathematics and its sub-field Decision Sciences rely heavily on looking up theorems and equations that are abundant and easily accessed on Wikipedia, thus these fields have a relatively high occurrence of Wikipedia citations.
Computer Science sits at the far left of Figure 3 with 8 of every 1 000 articles citing Wikipedia.We can only speculate about the reason for this, but one reasonable explanation would be that this discipline, like Mathematics and Decision Sciences, builds on certain forms of knowledge -of hardware, coding languages, software, and technologies -that is sometimes better covered in Wikipedia than by traditional encyclopaedias.Another possible explanation could be that acceptance for looking up information on Wikipedia might be higher among scholars and reviewers within this inherently digital field of inquiry.
Turning to the question of what types of Wikipedia articles tend to be cited, the Wikipedia references in all articles were extracted.This was done by using regex filtering to produce a raw text list including nothing but the actual titles of cited Wikipedia articles.This list was then analysed using WordStat (Péladeau 2003).With this content analysis software, a list of standard English stop words were removed after which a stemming algorithm was applied to standardize the list of entries.The results of a straightforward frequency count on the resulting list, as visualized in Figure 4, show the most often occurring words in the titles of all articles citing Wikipedia.The categories that come to the fore largely reflect the most represented fields (cf. Figure 3 The second section from the top, marked with diagonal stripes, illustrates that Wikipedia also seems to be employed in academic research for obtaining updated data on nations, populations, and demographics.The articles on GDP (Gross Domestic Product) and HDI (Human Development Index) are often consulted as are articles like 'List of countries by income equality', 'List of countries by military expenditures', 'List of countries by population density', and so on.In the graph as a whole, other themes that stand out are 'Management', with top articles such as 'Knowledge management' and 'Database management', as well as 'Language' with entries on 'Business execution language' and 'Swahili language' being among the most often cited.The other rough categories are Business and Management (bold diagonal stripes), Biology, Chemistry, Physics (dotted), Medicine (light grey), Media (latticed), and Miscellaneous (dark grey).All in all, this overview shows that Wikipedia tends to be used in academic research as a complement to, and sometimes as a replacement for, other reference works.This is especially true when it comes to current statistics because Wikipedia has the advantage of being constantly updated.

Wikipedia and Interdiscursivity
A key question in this article has to do with how knowledge gathered from Wikipedia is incorporated into academic discourse -what Latour (1987: 35) calls 'the context of citation'.This relates to the idea of interdiscursive flows, and in this case this refers to currents of discourse from a platform for user-generated content (Wikipedia) into a traditional context for knowledge production (scholarly research).Interdiscursive relationships are, in fact, one of the key themes in discourse studies.Assuming the social constructionist standpoint that reality can be represented in different ways entails recognising that connections between different discourses must be taken into account.Fairclough (2003: 124) writes: [D]ifferent discourses are one element of the relationship between different peoplethey may complement one another, compete with one another, one can dominate others, and so forth.
This article uses this perspective to study the points of intersection between Wikipedia discourse and scholarly discourse by identifying and analysing these inter-Culture Unbound, Volume 6, 2014 [617] sections in a sample of academic journal articles.What is of interest here is not the respective discourses as such, but rather the crossing points between the discourses (cf.Bjerke 2008).
The scholarly understandings that are conveyed through research papers are, in essence, a combination of elements from a number of specialised discourses that can be defined on the basis of authorship, discipline, type of source, etc.When the authors of a paper analyse their data, these discourses are brought together -they are articulated (Laclau & Mouffe 1985) -in various ways.This has to do with what Kristeva (1980) called 'intertextuality' or what Bachtin (1981) called 'dialogism'.Texts are rendered meaningful through their interdiscursive relationships with other texts.They draw on them, refer to them, contest them, assume that the reader knows them, and so on (Bachtin 1986: 69).After performing the general mapping, as outlined in research questions 1 through 3 above, the fourth research question addressed in this article revolves around analysing how Wikipedia cuts into scholarly discourse.
The first step is the identification of those points where Wikipedia enters scholarly discourse by being called upon in peer-reviewed and published research papers.These are cases of 'direct intertextuality' (Fairclough 2003: 49;Leech & Short 2007).The analysis of these points of intersection will be taken further in a second step where the incorporation of knowledge from Wikipedia in the research articles is studied.This tells us how the 'imported' elements (Bjerke 2008: 7) are framed in their new context.A key concept is 'recontextualisation', which is a term from educational sociology (Bernstein 1990) that has been taken up by discourse analysis (e.g.Fairclough 2003: 33).The notion of recontextualisation highlights the fact that intertextuality always involves some sort of transformation of meanings.When a formulation, an idea, or a concept is taken out of one discursive context and put into another, certain 'adjustments' need to be made in order for the piece of content to become meaningful in the new setting: [I]ntertextuality is a matter of recontextualization -a movement from one context to another, entailing particular transformations consequent upon how the material that is moved, recontextualized, figures within that new context (ibid.: 51).
In this article, the recontextualisations are analysed qualitatively by focusing on how knowledge from Wikipedia is introduced and packaged in the scholarly texts.Particular attention is paid to what Fairclough calls 'framing'.This has to do with the choices that are made about how to frame the voice of one text as it is incorporated into another.

The Framing of Wikipedia Knowledge in Academic Articles
Turning to the analysis of recontextualisations, a qualitative text analysis was performed on 1,799 articles.This sample included 4% of all peer-reviewed journal articles citing Wikipedia within each subject area indexed in Scopus.This thresh- [618] Culture Unbound, Volume 6, 2014 old was set quite roughly in order to select a reasonably sized portion of the dataset for qualitative analysis.For areas where 4% of the articles exceeded 200, the first 200 articles (sorted by 'Relevance', as defined in Scopus) were analysed.The analysis entailed doing batch searches in the TextWrangler application (www.barebones.com/products/textwrangler/) to find those places in the articles where Wikipedia was mentioned and then reading and thematising these passages (Braun & Clarke 2006).The text segments were coded and gradually brought together into a thematic structure that ended up including the following four types of recontextualisation: (1) as a complement or example, (2) as a repository, (3) as an uncommented incorporation, or (4) as a modalised incorporation.
The first identified way of referring to Wikipedia articles is in the form of complementary information or examples.In these cases, pointers to various Wikipedia articles are included and framed as 'extra' information that goes outside of the regular references to other types of literature.This use of Wikipedia is illustrated in the following excerpts from research papers: 1. Lazin, Lauren (2003): Tupac: Resurrection.Paramount; see also Wikipedia 2007, s. v. Nigger (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nigger#Nigga).

2.
Tryon's several language counts -105, 110, 113 -have subsequently been cited by many authors of published and, nowadays, online overviews of Vanuatu.Wikipedia's Vanuatu, for example, has 113 languages (Wikipedia nd); the CIA's Factbook has ''more than 100''; and Ethnologue lists 110 3.For details about this, as well as further information on TV Guide's history, see the entry 'TV Guide ' from Wikipedia (2006).

4.
'Open source development' is a term that was first coined in the world of software development for software whose source code was publicly available, and thus software that anyone could modify and then contribute back to the community.For more on this topic, please see: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opensource software Excerpt number 1 is an example of a case where Wikipedia is used in a complementary fashion alongside another reference (in this case a movie) and framed using the wording 'see also'.Similar use is illustrated in excerpt number 2 where a reference to Wikipedia is packaged together with other sources covering the same issue as one example among many of a certain type of knowledge.Excerpts 3 and 4 also express a related type of framing where, in both cases, Wikipedia entries are suggested as sources of further background information on a particular topic.Taken together, this category consists of examples in which citations of Wikipedia articles are used to provide additional information or knowledge in relation to the core frame of reference of the research paper in question.Related to this recontextualisation strategy, but a bit different, is the use of Wikipedia by Culture Unbound, Volume 6, 2014 [619] linking to it or pointing to it as a kind of a repository.This framing invokes the site as an online archive where useful bits and pieces of information are stored, hosted, and made accessible for reference.The following excerpts are examples of this: 5.
Reverend Martin Niemoller's (1946) words: First they came for the communists, and I did not speak out because I was not a communist.
Then they came for the trade unionists, and I did not speak out because I was not a trade unionist.
Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out because I was not a Jew.
Then they came for me and there was no one left to speak out.

6.
A critical mass of two-dimensional (2D) bar code users has recently emerged in Japan and it can be said that these 2D bar codes (see them illustrated in Wikipedia, 2007a) have enabled connections to be made between the mobile phone and publishing industries (see Fig. 2).

7.
Another map (see Wikipedia 2006) divides the country into two regions -Jesusland and the United States of Canada.
Excerpt number 5 refers to Wikipedia as a place where a famous quotation can be revisited, and excerpt number 6 points the reader to the online encyclopaedia in order to be able to see illustrations of (in this case) bar codes.Excerpt 7 refers to a map that is to be found on Wikipedia, and number 8 recommends Wikipedia as the source for looking at an image originally available in a printed book.The common denominator for this form of recontextualisation is that rather than pointing to other available -and more traditional -sources for these things, the authors have opted to make reference to Wikipedia.The third way of framing Wikipedia articles within academic publications is represented by an absence of explicit recontextualisation.In these cases, an uncommented reference is made to the encyclopaedia according to the standard conventions of scholarly writing.The following set of excerpts illustrate this: 9. Shariah covers not only religious ritual, but also many aspects of day-to-day life, politics, economics, banking, business or contract law, and social issues (Wikipedia, 2005).
[620] Culture Unbound, Volume 6, 2014 10.The Bermuda triangle is a region in the Atlantic Ocean where some aircrafts and surface vessels have disappeared.Flight 19 is the designation of five American fighters which disappeared in this triangle on December 9, 1945(Wikipedia 2008). 11.
The shallowness of the focus and the density of population greatly increased the severity of the earthquake (Wikipedia 2008). 12.
(C)riminals have historically used churches and temples as a hiding place in times of trouble (Wikipedia, 2008).

13.
Courier 1B, built by Philco, also launched in 1960, was the world's first active repeater satellite (Wikipedia, n.d.) In addition to these three more or less straightforward ways of recontextualising Wikipedia knowledge in academic articles, the fourth identified type of framing involves various modalisations.In critical discourse analysis, modality refers to the relationship between the author and what they write.In functional grammar, modality 'construes a region of uncertainty' (Halliday & Matthiessen 2004: 116) and it reflects the position of a speaker or writer in relation to what they say (Hodge & Kress 1988).By using certain 'markers of modalisation', an author or speaker to varying degrees commits to, or expresses affinity with, the information given.By looking at markers of modality in relation to how Wikipedia is referred to in scholarly papers, one can analyse with what level of assertion authors put forth these citations.In the thematic analysis, two levels of modalisation were coded with regard to the degree of modalisation.The following extracts are examples of a softer form: 14.
The concept of remix can refer to both material practices and ideas.Often associated exclusively with popular culture, as noted in Wikipedia, it is often understood as a 'hybridizing' practice in music 15.
The Wikipedia entry for Unconferences is also a worthwhile resource as is the blog site on unconferences (www.unconference.net)

16.
A recent Wikipedia entry reports that Christianity and Islam are the two largest religions in the world, with 2.1 billion and 1.5 billion followers, respectively (Wikipedia 2008).

17.
In fact, Wikipedia maintains a list of free and paid statistical software (List of Statistical Packages, n.d.).

18.
Since the boom of 'Web 2.0' early this century, Social Networking Sites have been on the rise.As of November 2009, Wikipedia lists 167 of them.
Culture Unbound, Volume 6, 2014 [621] The distinguishing feature for this type of framing, as opposed to the previously discussed type, is that it explicitly says something about Wikipedia in the sentence where the citation is made.Excerpt number 14 makes it clear that the information referred to is 'noted in Wikipedia', number 15 states that Wikipedia provides a resource that is 'worthwhile', and excerpt 16 notes that the presented statistics come from a 'recent Wikipedia entry'.Furthermore, extract 17 says that Wikipedia 'in fact' maintains the list used and number 18 emphasises that the number of social networking sites listed are 'as of November 2009 [on] Wikipedia'.While this soft modalisation constitutes no essential difference compared to the more straightforward way of recontextualising knowledge from the online encyclopaedia, there is another type of framing that represents a harder form of modalisation: 19.
In contrast to the other serials described, this series was very popular, at least according to a web-based source (Wikipedia [nd]), the producer (Tabloid Jelita/Dv/Idh [nd]) and some of my neighbors in Semarang where I recorded this show while carrying out fieldwork.

20.
Those who preside over the Drizzt Wikipedia page have written how 'Salvatore uses Drizzt to represent issues of racial prejudice' (Drizzt, n.d.).Drizzt has somehow rejected his evil nature but is often judged as evil.

21.
Wikipedia, written and edited collaboratively by volunteer authors in the general public, provides a peek at the lay perception of library history.The online article for Public Libraries claims, 'The origins of the public library as a social institution have not been well explored or recorded.The institution may have been inspired by the libraries of European universities, which in turn attempted to imitate research libraries in antiquity.'

22.
We used the 'List of Smart Card' directory in Wikipedia (2008) to identify relevant cases.We believe this list to be comprehensive and accurate for two reasons.First, we have followed smart card development over the past few years, and all the major initiatives that we are aware of are included.Second, we used alternative search methods (e.g., Google searches, and industry magazine listings) to identify possible missing cases and no additional cases were added.
This type of framing entails the use of different markers of modality that, in various ways, represent the above-mentioned 'region of uncertainty'.The underlined sections of excerpts 19 through 22 explicitly show the degree of affinity authors have with the statements they are making.A common pattern in the majority of cases where this framing is used for recontextualising Wikipedia knowledge in scholarly discourse is connected to the issues of the credibility and legitimacy of the site.Excerpt number 19, for example, modalises the reference to Wikipedia by stating that 'at least according to' this source the point in question can be made.
Obviously, this wording presumes that other more certain or reliable sources exist, the use of which would not require this type of modalisation.
Excerpt 20 emphasises the form of agency underlying Wikipedia.The author(s) do not simply refer to the entry in question, but also make it clear that this knowledge comes from 'those who preside over' this page.This framing entails a modalisation that would be much less expected if the information were coming from, say, Encyclopedia Britannica or any other source that is more established.By making it clear that Wikipedia entries are 'written' by a group 'presiding over' certain areas of knowledge, the author(s) modalise their reference to the site by implying that other things might have been 'written' if other people were 'presiding' over the entry.This is, of course, also the case with a source such as Encyclopaedia Britannica, but this is less likely to be explicitly stated when referring to such sources.A similar recontextualisation is illustrated in excerpt 21 where a reference to a Wikipedia article is not only modalised as being an 'online article', but the author(s) of the research article also make it clear that the site is 'written and edited by volunteer authors' and that it can, therefore, be said to 'provide a peek at the lay perception' of the topic.While other encyclopaedias also provide 'peeks' at certain 'perceptions' of the world, the stronger legitimacy of these sources makes it less likely that references to them would be modalised in this way.Conversely, the use of these modalisations indicates that Wikipedia tends to be seen as a less reliable and potentially more biased source of information than many others.This impression is further strengthened by the observation that authors sometimes feel the need -as illustrated in excerpt 22 -to motivate why knowledge and information coming from Wikipedia can be 'believed' to be 'comprehensive and accurate'.It is possible that the inclusions of these motivations are sometimes the product of requests from peer reviewers who are sceptical about Wikipedia as a source of information.

Conclusion
This article has analysed how content is moving from today's much celebrated smart online knowledge systems -based on the wisdom of crowds (Surowiecki 2004) -into established processes of knowledge production.The case that has been highlighted here is the use of Wikipedia as a source of material in scholarly research papers.Beyond the hype of social media, actual studies such as the one presented here are needed to better understand the development of this phenomenon.Without this type of knowledge, we would be left with what Lovink (2002: 10) fittingly calls 'vapor theory'.Assessing the actual circumstances under which crowdsourced knowledge benefits scholarly research can contribute to a better understanding of the potential role of user-generated information in science and innovation.
The empirical analysis presented in this article has shown that there has been an increase in the use of Wikipedia as a reference within all areas of science and scholarship.This development is clearly illustrated with the data from the Scopus Culture Unbound, Volume 6, 2014 [623] database showing that 14 papers cited Wikipedia in 2003, around 1,500 cited Wikipedia in 2006, and over 9,000 cited Wikipedia in 2011.It was further shown that Wikipedia is used to a larger extent within subject areas like Computer Science, Mathematics, Social Sciences, and Arts and Humanities than in the Natural Sciences, Medicine, and Psychology.Wikipedia is used as a source for a variety of knowledge and information and as a replacement for traditional reference works.
The thematic and qualitative analysis presented here showed that Wikipedia knowledge is recontextualised in different ways when it is incorporated into scholarly discourse.In general, one can identify both unmodalised and modalised forms of framing Wikipedia citations.The unmodalised uses include referring to Wikipedia as a complement, as an example, as a repository, and as an unproblematic source of information.The modalised use is characterised by the use of various markers that emphasise in different ways that Wikipedia cannot be automatically trusted.It is said to be 'web-based', 'online', and founded on a type of authorship that differs from the traditional form.Authors using a modalised framing appear to feel obligated to motivate why they have chosen to cite Wikipedia.This illustrates the following key conclusion of this study: Wikipedia is increasingly used as a reference in scholarly research, but it has not yet achieved full legitimacy as a primary source.Traditionally positivist sciences use it less than interpretive disciplines, and those citing it sometimes feel the need -or might have been urged -to explain why they have chosen Wikipedia rather than other sources.Looking at the modalisations used, it seems that the biggest issues with the site are the fact that it is 'online' and that its collective and volunteer authorship might lead it express 'lay' rather than 'professional' perceptions and might make it prone to bias when only some groups 'preside' over certain pages.
The increased use of crowdsourced knowledge for academic references is not limited to Wikipedia. .This figure excludes articles that discuss or analyse these services in particular or social media in general.Even though the absolute numbers are still small, the increase is obvious. [624] Culture Unbound, Volume 6, 2014 These services, when used as sources of information and knowledge, can -like Wikipedia -be seen as platforms for crowdsourced knowledge.But in the cases of Twitter, Facebook, WordPress, and YouTube we are also dealing with potentially less structured and more diverse forms of content.As academia gradually embraces the wisdom of crowds -as enabled by collective intelligence through social content platforms -the ways in which this wisdom is used will have to be negotiated within the scholarly community.As this study of Wikipedia -maybe the most popular collaborative online platform -shows, the use of collective intelligence sources has not changed scholarly citation practices to any significant degree.The use of these sources is still marginal, and the ways in which they are used suggest that they are only incorporated in ways that sit well with established traditions for scholarly citations.The future will present two challenges.First, scholars will have to find ways to maintain rigour in the face of increasingly diverse sources of knowledge.Second, the academic community will have to find ways to benefit from the wisdom of crowds without being discouraged by the open and vernacular nature of such wisdom.
Simon Lindgren is Professor of Sociology at Umeå University, Sweden.He researches digital culture with a focus on social connections, social organisation and social movements.He works with developing theoretical as well as methodological tools for analysing discursive and social network aspects of the evolving new media landscape.His publications cover themes like hacktivism, digital piracy, citizen journalism, subcultural creativity and learning, popular culture and visual politics.Simon is the author of New Noise: A Cultural Sociology of Digital Disruption (2013) and the editor of Hybrid Media Culture: Sensing Place in a World of Flows (2013).More information can be found at www.simonlindgren.com.Email: simon.lindgren@umu.se Culture Unbound, Volume 6, 2014 [625] ), for example, terms from Computer Science and Mathematics citations are similar to those from citations in the field of Business and Management and so on.Looking closer at the words in this context provides more information about what lies behind the different bars in the figure.The bars have been grouped and colour coded based on a rough qualitative thematisation, and this gives a somewhat more structured image of the cited articles even though the categories are not clear-cut.The black at the top of the graph primarily represents the relatively large number of references to articles with words like 'law', 'algorithm', 'theorem', 'coefficient', and 'equation' in their titles.Examples of frequent Wikipedia articles are [616] Culture Unbound, Volume 6, 2014 'Moore's law', 'Zipf's law', 'Metcalfe's law', 'Genetic algorithm', 'Greedy algorithm', 'Dijkstra's algorithm', 'Central limit theorem', 'Dominated convergence theorem', 'Spearman's rank correlation coefficient', and 'Hill equation'.This further strengthens the conclusion that Wikipedia tends to be used in disciplines like Mathematics and Decision Sciences for looking up and making reference to various types of principles and postulates.The third set of bars from the top, marked in white, illustrates that this type of citation behaviour extends into the field of Computer Science where top articles include 'Mobile ad hoc network', 'List of social software', and 'Cloud computing'.
Figure 5 provides an overview of the occurrence of the micro-blogging platform Twitter (launched in 2006), the social network site Facebook (launched in 2004), the social video site YouTube (launched in 2005), and the blogging platform WordPress (launched in 2003) in Scopus reference lists since 2006