Wikipedia:Expert editors: Difference between revisions

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{{redirect|WP:EXPERT|page about retaining expert editors|WP:Expert retention}}{{redirect|WP:EX|the external links guideline|WP:EXT}}
{{redirect|Wikipedia:Subject-matter expert|reliability of self-published sources by subject-matter experts|Wikipedia:Self-published sources}}
{{mergefrom|Wikipedia:Wikipedia editing for research scientists|discussion=Wikipedia talk:Expert editors#Merge_in_Wikipedia:Wikipedia_editing_for_research_scientists}}
{{redirect|WP:SME|the essay on advanced permissions|Wikipedia:Super Mario effect}}
{{essay|WP:EXPERT|WP:IANAE|WP:EX|cat=Category:Wikipedia essays about experts and expertise}}
'''[[Expert]] editors''' can be very valuable contributors to Wikipedia, but they sometimes have a difficult time realizing that Wikipedia is a different environment from scholarly and scientific publishing.
{{hatnote|This page is about retaining expert editors on Wikipedia.{{clarify}}
New editors may prefer [[Help:Wikipedia editing for researchers, scholars, and academics]] or [[Help:Wikipedia editing for non-academic experts]].
Non-expert editors seeking expert advice may want [[Wikipedia:Expert help]], and for social advice [[Wikipedia:Relationships with academic editors]]
[[Wikipedia:Expert retention]] is about retaining expert editors as active editors on Wikipedia.}}
 
The mission of Wikipedia is to provide articles that ''summarize'' accepted knowledge regarding their subjects, working in a community of editors who can be anonymous if they wish. We generally find "accepted knowledge" in high quality secondary sources like [[literature review]]s and books.
 
Wikipedia has no formal structure with which to determine whether an editor is a subject-matter expert, and does not grant users privileges based on expertise; what matters in Wikipedia is what you do, not who you are. Previously published [[WP:RS|reliable sources]], not Wikipedia editors, have authority for the content of this encyclopedia.
'''[[Expert]] editors''' can be very valuable contributors to Wikipedia, but they sometimes have a difficult time realising that Wikipedia is a different environment from scholarly and scientific publishing.
 
Please do not use Wikipedia to promote your own papers (see [[WP:REFSPAM]] and [[WP:SELFCITE]]), and please do not author [[literature review]]s in Wikipedia (we summarize reviews; we don't ''generate'' them here). There is great advice below — please take some time to read it and consider it, to help you adapt to this environment. We greatly appreciate your desire to help build and maintain the encyclopedia.
The mission of Wikipedia is to provide articles that ''summarize'' accepted knowledge regarding their subjects, working in a community of editors who can be anonymous if they wish. We generally find "accepted knowledge" in high quality secondary sources like [[literature review]]s and books.
 
Wikipedia has no formal structure with which to determine whether an editor is a subject-matter expert, and does not grant users privileges based on expertise; what matters in Wikipedia is what you do, not who you are. Previously published [[WP:RS|reliable sources]], not Wikipedia editors, have authority for the content of this encyclopedia.
 
Please do not use Wikipedia to promote your own papers (see [[WP:REFSPAM]] and [[WP:SELFCITE]]), and please do not author [[literature review]]s in Wikipedia (we summarize reviews; we don't ''generate'' them here). There is great advice below — please take some time to read it and consider it, to help you adapt to this environment. We greatly appreciate your desire to help build and maintain the encyclopedia!
 
==General==
{{See also|Wikipedia:Conflicts of interest (medicine)|Wikipedia:Conflict of interest}}
# Subject-matter experts are well-equipped to help articles achieve a truly [[WP:NPOV|neutral point of view]] by identifying gaps in articles where important ideas are not discussed, or places where [[WP:UNDUE|ideas are over- or underemphasized]], and to identify optimal and recent sources in their fields. (See [[Wikipedia:Reliable sources]] and [[Wikipedia:Identifying reliable sources (medicine)]])
# Subject-matter experts are well-equipped to help articles achieve a truly [[WP:NPOV|neutral point of view]] by identifying gaps in articles where important ideas are not discussed, or places where [[WP:UNDUE|ideas are over- or under-emphasized]], and to identify optimal and recent sources in their fields. (See [[Wikipedia:Reliable sources]] and [[Wikipedia:Identifying reliable sources (medicine)]])
# No editor is exempt from fundamental Wikipedia policies; in particular, the policies of [[WP:NOR|no original research]] and [[WP:V|verifiability]] along with guidelines such as [[WP:RS|reliable sources]] apply to expert editors just as well. Although other encyclopedias might have articles based on personal "expert opinion" or unpublished conjecture, Wikipedia requires all text to be verifiable to published sources.
# Experts, of course, can be wrong; and different experts can reasonably disagree on the same topic.
# Wikipedia does not grant additional powers or respect to subject-matter experts. Wikipedia does not have a process for determining (a) who is a bona fide expert and on what subject(s), and (b) in which articles a given expert should edit. Given that many editors, including experts, post pseudonymously, vetting users as experts (identity, credentials or experience) is not practical, even though it is technically feasible to verify a user's identitiesidentity if disclosed.
# In discussions with expert editors, lay editors are encouraged to use experts as a new source of information. Knowing why things are written as they are by the experts will facilitate future discussions.
# Despite claims to the contrary from Wikipedia critics, experts (or other editors) do ''not'' need to appeal to Wikipedia administrators or arbitrators to remove [[WP:PN|patent nonsense]] from the encyclopedia. Unsourced claims which are challenged can easily be removed, though they may be reinserted later by others.
 
===Advice for expert editors===
# Experts can identify themselves on their [[Wikipedia:user page|user page]] and list any credentials and experience they wish to publicly divulge as it may help fellow Wikipedians who seek advice or expertise. Experts should be aware there is no personal advantage and considerable risk in divulging one's real identity and expertise in this way. However, please see [[WP:REALNAME]], and think carefully before you do this. Do not publicly identify yourself if this could put you at harm in the real world, e.g., from stalkers. It may make more sense to declare credentials without self-identifying. Wikipedia is based on [[WP:CONSENSUS|consensus]] of editors, not on [[credentialism]], so the fact that yours won't be directly verifiable isn't really important. We [[WP:AGF|assume good faith]], and generally trust you to be honest.
# A bit more on "credentialism" - authors of scholarly works are listed on the work, and the authority of authors matters a great deal to readers. In Wikipedia, there are no listed authors. The only authority for content, is what sources say, and the [[WP:PAG|policies and guidelines]] under which we summarize them and work together. In its early days Wikipedia did stray into accepting the authority of editors, which led to the [[Essjay controversy]]. Since then the community has rigorously adhered to the principle that it doesn't matter who you are or who you say you are - what matters is the quality of the sources you bring and of your edits summarizing those sources, and how well you work with others. You will gain a reputation here, but it will be based solely on what you do here.
# Editing an article in Wikipedia is similar in some ways to writing an article for an academic journal and different in others. As with a [[literature review]] article you need to provide a solid review of the subject as a whole, accurately ''summarizing'' what other published reviews say. But be careful not to add your own [[WP:OR|interpretation]] or [[WP:SYN|synthesis]] of the topic. Support all factual statements with citations in much the same way as required for a journal article. Wikipedia is not a place to publish [[WP:NOR|original research]], nor your own [[WP:SYN|synthesis of the research literature]]. The genre here is "[[encyclopedia]]"—each article is meant to provide "a summary of accepted knowledge regarding its subject".
# Wikipedia has its own [[WP:Article titles|article titles policy]] and [[WP:Manual of Style|manual of style]], geared toward making the encyclopedia as reader-friendly as possible to a broad, general audience, without dumbing down content. These Wikipedia-internal best practices are a careful balance of compromises, and they generally do not match in every detail what is preferred in any particular discipline, since stylistic preferences vary in ways that conflict between different fields. Experts are already familiar with having to adapt their writing style for whatever publication to which they are submitting material, and should approach Wikipedia with the same mindset.
# Expert editors can join the [[Wikipedia:WikiProject|WikiProjects]] concerning their areas of expertise. WikiProjects help articles on related subjects to be coordinated and edited by a group of identified interested parties. All editors are free to join any WikiProject in which they are interested, regardless of expertise.
# Experts do not have any privileges in resolving conflicts in their favor: in a content dispute between a (supposed) expert and a non-expert, it is not permissible for the expert to "pull rank" and declare victory. "Because I say so" or "because I have a PhD from Harvard" or "I wrote the most-used textbook in this field" are never an acceptable justificationjustifications for a claim in Wikipedia, regardless of expertise. All editors, whether they are expert editors or high school graduates must cite [[WP:RS|reliable sources]] for all claims. Likewise, expert contributions are not protected from subsequent revisions from non-experts. Ideally, if not always in practice, it is the quality of the edits and the reliable sources upon which they are based that counts.
# {{highlight|Expert editors are cautioned to be mindful of the potential [[Wikipedia:conflict of interest|conflict of interest]] that may arise if editing articles which concern an expert's own research, writings, discoveries, or the article about herself/himselfthemself|cornsilk}}. Wikipedia's [[WP:SELFCITE|conflict of interest]] policyguideline ''does'' allow an editor to include information from his or hertheir own publications in Wikipedia articles and to cite them. This may only be done when the editors are sure that the Wikipedia article maintains a [[Wikipedia:Neutral point of view|neutral point of view]] and their material has been published in a [[Wikipedia:Reliable sources|reliable source]] by a third party. If the neutrality or reliability are questioned, it is Wikipedia [[Wikipedia: Consensus|consensus]], rather than the expert editor, that decides what is to be done. When in doubt, it is good practice for a person who may have a conflict of interest to disclose it on the relevant article's [[Wikipedia:talk page|talk page]] and to suggest changes there rather than in the article. Transparency is essential to the workings of Wikipedia.
 
==Wikipedia-integrated scholarly publishing==
{{main|WP:Wiki to journal publication|WP:Journal to wiki publication}}
Several academic journals now provide a dual-publishing model where suitable academic review articles are published as a stable, indexed version of record, and also copied as a Wikipedia page.<ref>
{{Cite journal
|last=Shafee |first=Thomas
|date=2017-11-24
|title=Wikipedia-integrated publishing: a comparison of successful models
|url=https://www.hlinc.org.au/images/Health_Inform_Articles/Health_Inform_Vol._26_No.2_2017/Health_Inform_Volume_26_Number_2_2017_-_Thomas_Shafee_-_La_Trobe_University.pdf
|journal=Health Inform
|volume=26 |issue=2
|doi=10.13140/rg.2.2.27470.77129 |doi-access=free
}}</ref> These generate a citeable version of the article for the author as well as providing peer-reviewed content for the encyclopedia.
 
==Advice for new expert editors==
Examples include:
*[[PLOS Computational Biology]]<ref>
{{Cite journal
|last=Wodak |first=Shoshana J.
|last2=Mietchen |first2=Daniel
|last3=Collings |first3=Andrew M.
|last4=Russell |first4=Robert B.
|last5=Bourne |first5=Philip E.
|date=2012-03-29
|title=Topic Pages: PLoS Computational Biology Meets Wikipedia
|url=http://journals.plos.org/ploscompbiol/article/file?id=10.1371/journal.pcbi.1002446&type=printable
|journal=[[PLOS Computational Biology]]
|volume=8 |issue=3 |pages=e1002446
|doi=10.1371/journal.pcbi.1002446 |doi-access=free
|pmid=22479174
}}</ref>
*[[PLOS Genetics]]<ref>
{{Cite news
|last=Luk |first=Ann
|date=2017-04-12
|title=Continuing to Bridge the Journal-Wikipedia Gap: Introducing Topic Pages for PLOS Genetics
|url=http://blogs.plos.org/biologue/2017/04/12/continuing-to-bridge-the-journal-wikipedia-gap-introducing-topic-pages-for-plos-genetics/
|work=PLOS Biologue
|access-date=2018-03-21
}}</ref>
*[[Gene (journal)|Gene]]<ref>
{{Cite journal
|last=Tsueng |first=Ginger
|last2=Good |first2=Benjamin M.
|last3=Ping |first3=Peipei
|last4=Golemis |first4=Erica
|last5=Hanukoglu |first5=Israel
|last6=Wijnen |first6=Andre J. van
|last7=Su |first7=Andrew I.
|year=2016-11-05
|title=Gene Wiki Reviews—Raising the quality and accessibility of information about the human genome
|url=http://linkinghub.elsevier.com/retrieve/pii/S0378111916303493
|journal=Gene
|volume=592 |issue=2 |pages=235–238
|doi=10.1016/j.gene.2016.04.053 |doi-access=free
}}</ref>
*[[RNA Biology]]<ref>
{{Cite journal
|last=Butler |first=Declan
|date=2008-12-16
|title=Publish in Wikipedia or perish
|url=http://www.nature.com/news/2008/081216/full/news.2008.1312.html
|journal=Nature News
|doi=10.1038/news.2008.1312 |doi-access=free
}}</ref>
*[[v:WikiJournal of Medicine|WikiJournal of Medicine]]<ref>
{{Cite journal
|last=Shafee |first=Thomas
|last2=Das |first2=Diptanshu
|last3=Masukume |first3=Gwinyai
|last4=Häggström |first4=Mikael
|date=2017-01-15
|title=WikiJournal of Medicine, the first Wikipedia-integrated academic journal
|url=https://en.wikiversity.org/wiki/WikiJournal_of_Medicine/WikiJournal_of_Medicine,_the_first_Wikipedia-integrated_academic_journal
|journal=WikiJournal of Medicine
|volume=4 |issue=1 |page=1
|doi=10.15347/wjm/2017.001 |doi-access=free
}}</ref>
*[[v:WikiJournal of Science|WikiJournal of Science]]<ref>
{{Cite journal
|last=Editorial Board
|date=2018-06-01
|title=The aims and scope of WikiJournal of Science
|url=https://en.wikiversity.org/wiki/WikiJournal_of_Science/The_aims_and_scope_of_WikiJournal_of_Science
|journal=WikiJournal of Science|language=en|volume=1|issue=1|pages=1
|doi=10.15347/wjs/2018.001
|issn=2470-6345
}}</ref>
*[[Open Medicine (John Willinsky journal)|Open Medicine]] (discontinued)<ref>
{{Cite journal
|last=Maskalyk |first=James
|date=2014-10-02
|title=Modern medicine comes online
|journal=Open Medicine
|volume=8 |issue=4 |pages=e116–e119
|pmid=25426179
|pmc=4242788
}}</ref>
Wikipedia articles can be submitted to WikiJournals via this page: [[WP:WikiJournal article nominations]]
 
{{quote|A guy who never finished [[High School|HS]] who can cite sources that support his arguments, is more compelling than a professor who can't.|TJ Berens|Quora.com}}
==See also==
* [[Help:Wikipedia editing for researchers, scholars, and academics]]
*[[Wikipedia:Expert help]]
* [[WikipediaHelp:RelationshipsWikipedia editing withfor non-academic editorsexperts]]
* [[Help:Wikipedia editing for researchers, scholars, andmedical academicsexperts]]
* [[Wikipedia:Ten simple rules for editing Wikipedia]]{{snd}}an essay from ''[[PLoS Computational Biology]]'' aimed at scientists
*[[Help:Wikipedia editing for non-academic experts]]
*[[Wikipedia:Ten Simple Rules for Editing Wikipedia]], an essay from [[PLoS Computational Biology]] aimed at scientists.
*[[Wikipedia:Advocacy#Experience and expertise]]
*[[Wikipedia:Expert retention]]
*[[Wikipedia:Competence is required]]
*[[Wikipedia:Randy in Boise]], a class of incompetent editors particularly frustrating to experts
*[[Wikipedia:Specialized-style fallacy]]
*[[User:Jnc/Astronomer vs Amateur]]
 
==Advice on working with expert editors==
==References==
Non-expert editors seeking expert advice may want [[Wikipedia:Expert help]], and for social advice [[Wikipedia:Relationships with academic editors]].
<references/>
[[Wikipedia:Expert retention]] is about retaining expert editors as active editors on Wikipedia.
 
==Further readingSee also ==
* {{Section link|Wikipedia:Conflict of interest#How to disclose a COI}}
*{{cite journal
* [[Wikipedia:Plain and simple conflict of interest guide]]
|last1=Logan |first1=Darren W.
* [[WP:CURATOR]] - advice for museum curators and analogous professionals
|last2=Sandal |first2=Massimo
|last3=Gardner |first3=Paul P.
|last4=Manske |first4=Magnus
|last5=Bateman |first5=Alex
|title=Ten Simple Rules for Editing Wikipedia
|journal=PLoS Computational Biology
|date=2010-09-30
|volume=6 |issue=9 |pages=e1000941
|doi=10.1371/journal.pcbi.1000941 |doi-access=free
|pmid=20941386
|pmc=2947980
}}
 
[[Category:Wikipedia expert help]]