Expert outreach

"If you're serious about ensuring public engagement in your research then you need to make damn sure your work can be incorporated into Wikipedia. Wikipedia is the most important engagement channel for your research."

—Cameron Neylon (Public Library of Science) "Wikimedia UK Annual Review 2012-13"

"Wikipedia is an illustration of the way that academic work needs to change to benefit from a more educated public, a more networked world, in an age of information abundance. 21st-century scholars should be working with it, not against it."

—Amber Thomas (Jisc) Ariadne, November 2012 "21st-century Scholarship and Wikipedia"

"One of the most rewarding aspects can be in helping shape the public image of their field, say contributors. For many subjects – including scholarly topics – it is very often Wikipedia pages that are the top hits on Google, and for scholars who want their field represented accurately or interestingly, contributing to Wikipedia can help."

—Zoe Corbyn, The Guardian, Tuesday 29 March 2011 "Wikipedia wants more contributions from academics"

"The key challenge for the scholarly community [...] is to work actively with Wikipedia to strengthen its role in 'pre-research.' We need to build stronger links from its entries to more advanced resources that have been created and maintained by the academy."

—Casper Grathwohl, Oxford University Press, The Chronicle of Higher Education, 7 January 2011 "Wikipedia Comes of Age"

"I request that the public fund my research through their tax and charitable contributions; in return I consider it my responsibility to provide them with accurate, up-to-date and free access to the scientific progress they pay for."

—Darren Logan (Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute), Wellcome Trust Blog, 18 May 2011 "Being a scientist in the age of Wikipedia"

"Perhaps other academic societies and professional bodies can contribute to upgrading and extending Wikipedia entries. [...] [T]he advent of several geoscientific Wikipedians would greatly enhance Wikipedia's geological coverage, to the benefit of all."

—Brian Whalley (University of Sheffield) Ariadne, July 2012 "Wikipedia: Reflections on Use and Acceptance in Academic Environments"

"Wikipedia's user-friendly global reach offers an unprecedented opportunity for public engagement with science. Scientists who receive public or charitable funding should therefore seize the opportunity to make sure that Wikipedia articles are understandable, scientifically accurate, well sourced and up-to-date."

—Alex Bateman and Darren Logan (Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute), Nature, 9 December 2010 "Time to underpin Wikipedia wisdom"

"Dear Wikipedia, I want to thank you and to compliment you on your service. I often use it, especially also for technical information in physics and astronomy. Just now I was impressed by the density of information in your article on QCD, the theory of the strong interaction, in particular, its history."

—Jack Steinberger, 1988 Physics Nobel Laureate, 9 September 2010