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 majority of the literature. I cannot really see any particular perspective coming through here. It is actually very carefully written." (Reviewer 1 – academic – Attention)

This judgment contrasts sharply with the comments from the same reviewer on the Britannica article on the same topic, which was described as "all very out-of-date, and therefore would be of no use in a current research article". In fact, it was consistently striking throughout the sample, that Wikipedia articles were nearly all considered to be more up to date than others, although being more up to date was not always a sufficient reason for a Wikipedia article to be considered the better of the two, if it failed on a combination of other factors such as clarity, cohesion or accuracy.

Referencing

The same is also true with respect to the presence of references. Wikipedia articles generally earned approval for their references, although – as we indicate below – these were not invariably judged to be advantageous. Wikipedia articles were clearly acknowledged as being more extensively referenced than others, even if in some respects it was not considered to provide as much information as the other article:


 * "The second article [Wikipedia] gives a clear idea of the nature of climate change and its science but doesn't give as much detail on its impacts as the first one. Overall, the second article is better structured, organised and referenced," (Reviewer 2 – doctoral student – Cambio Climatico)

When the references are considered to be appropriate, this would generally earn the highest praise from reviewers, as in the following comment from the other reviewer for this article: "References are broad, valid and of the highest quality available." (Reviewer 1 – professor – Cambio Climatico). Similarly, it is the scholarly nature of its writing, supported by appropriate references, that earns Wikipedia higher praise in the following two separate instances, even though it is by implication to some extent insufficiently comprehensive if taken alone:


 * "I preferred the 1st article [Wikipedia] to the second. It is written in a more scholarly manner and it provides a lot of references. I found the second paper still a draft, and this might be the case. Ideally you would combine the two to give a more comprehensive picture of preschool education." Reviewer 2 – academic – Preschool Education)


 * "The works cited are all of high-scholarly quality." (Reviewer 1 – research student – Anselm of Canterbury)

The mere existence of references did not, though, necessarily earn approval, as all three reviewers make quite clear with respect to the Wikipedia article on Parkinson's:

 The references cited are all from internet and these references could be changed or removed from the internet [...] I prefer the use of medical data from published text books in the right way." (Reviewer 1 – academic) "Referencing was poor throughout the article." (Reviewer 2 – academic)  44