Can you use Wikipedia in Research for essays, reports and disserations?
It's a question that many students are worried about, since at some universities and colleges students are being marked down in their research for citing Wikipedia as a resource.
The answer is Yes - you can use Wikipedia... BUT only if you use it as a tool to find the original sources of the material.
What academics are concerned about is the ease at which anyone - for various motives - can edit Wikipedia. If you use it as research material, this means that you may be using incorrect material. In short, since you can't trust it 100%, you shouldn't at all.
But that doesn't mean that it isn't a handy tool - as long as you let it point you in the direction of relevant research material.
The founders of Wikipedia make it clear that it should not be a place for original research. i.e. you shouldn't publish any theories there, without them being published elsewhere first.
So, if you want to use Wikipedia in your research, the answer is simple! Go to the relevant pages, and scroll to the bottom of the page.
There are two areas to pay attention to. One is References - where the source material of the article is linked to (or books referenced) and the second is External Links.
Go to these pages, and reference these directly in your reports and essays. You've managed to use Wikipedia to point you in the right direction, but by not referencing it directly you've avoided getting in trouble with your lecturer!
