Why and how medical schools, peer-reviewed journals, and research funders should promote Wikipedia editing

ABSTRACT

Do academics, both directly and indirectly involved with healthcare, have a moral mandate to ensure that Wikipedia has the most accurate, up-to-date and understandable information? From the perspective of a physician who is also a long-time Wikipedia editor, the ethical, moral, and power dynamics of the medical community’s interaction with Wikipedia are explored in this paper. An attempt is made to reconcile and identify the key stakeholders affected by Wikipedia’s accuracy and credibility, including medical institutions such as peer-reviewed journals, medical schools, research funders and academic reward systems. These stakeholders act as the true guardians of Primum non nocere – first to do no harm. Finally, suggestions are made on how to increase the sharing of medical knowledge on Wikipedia by focusing advocacy towards these ‘true guardians’ rather than relying on the benevolence of individual academics.

KEYWORDS:

• Wikipedia
• medicine
• health
• social media
• education
• pedagogy

Acknowledgements

GM acknowledges Dr. Lisa Kipersztok for her very helpful comments and suggestions.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

ORCID

Gwinyai Masukume http://orcid.org/0000-0002-9251-0264