Wind power research in Wikipedia: Does Wikipedia demonstrate direct influence of research publications and can it be used as adequate source in research evaluation?

Abstract

This paper is a result of the WOW project (Wind power On Wikipedia) which forms part of the SAPIENS (Scientometric Analyses of the Productivity and Impact of Eco-economy of Spain) project (Sanz-Casado et al. in Scientometrics 95(1):197–224, 2013). WOW is designed to observe the relationship between scholarly publications and societal impact or visibility through the mentions of scholarly papers (journal articles, books and conference proceedings papers) in the Wikipedia, English version. We determine (1) the share of scientific papers from a specific set defined by Wind Power research in Web of Science (WoS) 2006–2015 that are included in Wikipedia entries, named data set A; (2) the distribution of scientific papers in Wikipedia entries on Wind Power, named data set B, captured via the three categories for the topic Wind Power in the Wikipedia Portal: Wind Power, Wind turbines and Wind farms; (3) the distributions of document types in the two wiki entry data sets’ reference lists. In parallel the paper aims at designing and test indicators that measure societal impact and R&D properties of the Wikipedia, such as, a wiki reference focus measure; and a density measure of those types in wiki entries. The study is based on Web mining techniques and a developed software that extracts a range of different types of Wikipedia references from the data sets A and B. Findings show that in data set A 25.4% of the wiki references are academic, with a density of 17.62 academic records detected per wiki entry. However, only 0.62% of the original WoS records on Wind Power are also found as wiki references, implying that the direct societal impact through the Wikipedia is extremely small for Wind Power research. In the second Wikipedia set on Wind Power (data set B), the presence of scientific papers is even more insignificant (10.6%; density: 3.08; WoS paper percentage: 0.26%). Notwithstanding, the Wikipedia can be used as a tool informing about the transfer from scholarly publications to popular and non-peer reviewed publications, such as Web pages (news, blogs), popular magazines (science/technology) and research reports. Non-scholarly wiki reference types stand for 74.6% of the wiki references (data set A) and almost 90% in data set B. Interestingly, the few WoS articles in wiki entries on Wind Power present on average 34.3 citations received during the same period (2006–2015) as WoS Wind Power publications not mentioned in wiki entries only receives on average 5.9 citations. Owing to the scarcity of Wind Power research papers in the Wikipedia, it cannot be applied as a direct source in evaluation of Wind Power research. This is in line with other recent studies regarding other subject areas. However, our analysis presents and discusses six supplementary indirect indicators for research evaluation, based on publication types found in the wiki entry reference lists: share of (WoS) records; density; and reference focus, plus popular science knowledge export, non-scholarly knowledge export and academic knowledge export. The same indicators are direct measures of the Wikipedia reference properties.

Appendices

Appendix 1: Wind Power search strategy in web of science

TS = (”wind power” OR “wind turbine*” OR “wind energy*” OR “wind farm*” OR “wind generation” OR “wind systems”)

• Refined by: [excluding] Web of Science Categories = (ASTRONOMY ASTROPHYSICS)

• Databases = SCI-EXPANDED, SSCI, CPCI-S, CPCI-SSH

• Time window: 2006–2015

• Lemmatization = On

Appendix 2: Wind power entries from Wikipedia collected in data set B

No.	Wikipedia entry	No.	Wikipedia entry
1	Airborne wind turbine	35	Wind power in India
2	Community wind energy	36	Wind power in Iran
3	Darrieus wind turbine	37	Wind power in Italy
4	Environmental effects of wind power	38	Wind power in Japan
5	Floating wind turbine	39	Wind power in Kenya
6	History of wind power	40	Wind power in Lithuania
7	List of offshore wind farms	41	Wind power in Malta
8	List of onshore wind farms	42	Wind power in Mexico
9	List of wind turbine manufacturers	43	Wind power in Morocco
10	Savonius wind turbine	44	Wind power in New Zealand
11	Small wind turbine	45	Wind power in Pakistan
12	Unconventional wind turbines	46	Wind power in Poland
13	Vertical axis wind turbine	47	Wind power in Portugal
14	Wind energy software	48	Wind power in Romania
15	Wind farm management	49	Wind power in Russia
16	Wind farms	50	Wind power in Serbia
17	Wind power	51	Wind power in Spain
18	Wind power consulting companies	52	Wind power in Sweden
19	Wind power forecasting	53	Wind power in Thailand
20	Wind power in Asia	54	Wind power in the European Union
21	Wind power in Australia	55	Wind power in the Netherlands
22	Wind power in Austria	56	Wind power in the Philippines
23	Wind power in Belgium	57	Wind power in the Republic of Ireland
24	Wind power in Brazil	58	Wind power in the United Kingdom
25	Wind power in Canada	59	Wind power in the United States
26	Wind power in China	60	Wind power in Turkey
27	Wind power in Croatia	61	Wind power industry
28	Wind power in Denmark	62	Wind resource assessment
29	Wind power in Estonia	63	Wind turbine aerodynamics
30	Wind power in Finland	64	Wind turbine design
31	Wind power in France	65	Wind turbines
32	Wind power in Germany	66	Wind-powered land vehicle
33	Wind power in Greece	67	Windmill
34	Wind power in Hungary