The FEBS Journal
 2020
DOI: 10.1111/febs.15608
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Measuring the quality of scientific references in Wikipedia: an analysis of more than 115M citations to over 800 000 scientific articles

Joshua M. Nicholson1,
Ashish Uppala2,
Matthias Sieber3
et al.

Abstract: Wikipedia is a widely used online reference work which cites hundreds of thousands of scientific articles across its entries. The quality of these citations has not been previously measured, and such measurements have a bearing on the reliability and quality of the scientific portions of this reference work. Using a novel technique, a massive database of qualitatively described citations, and machine learning algorithms, we analyzed 1,923,575 Wikipedia articles which cited a total of 824,298 scientific article… Show more

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Cited by 21 publications

(12 citation statements)
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“…The top 10 most cited publications had much more supporting citations than contrasting ones, in the ratio of 2.9:1 to 12.5:1. This ratio was consistent with other literature sets, such as scientific publications referenced in Wikipedia entries (8.8:1) and those indexed by Web of Science in general (6.8:1) [58]. Of course, most citations were neutral mentioning.…”
Section: Discussionsupporting
confidence: 89%
Exaggerated anticipatory anxiety is common in social anxiety disorder (SAD). Neuroimaging studies have revealed altered neural activity in response to social stimuli in SAD, but fewer studies have examined neural activity during anticipation of feared social stimuli in SAD. The current study examined the time course and magnitude of activity in threat processing brain regions during speech anticipation in socially anxious individuals and healthy controls (HC). Method Participants (SAD n = 58; HC n = 16) underwent functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) during which they completed a 90s control anticipation task and 90s speech anticipation task.
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“…The top 10 most cited publications had much more supporting citations than contrasting ones, in the ratio of 2.9:1 to 12.5:1. This ratio was consistent with other literature sets, such as scientific publications referenced in Wikipedia entries (8.8:1) and those indexed by Web of Science in general (6.8:1) [58]. Of course, most citations were neutral mentioning.…”
Section: Discussionsupporting
confidence: 89%
Exaggerated anticipatory anxiety is common in social anxiety disorder (SAD). Neuroimaging studies have revealed altered neural activity in response to social stimuli in SAD, but fewer studies have examined neural activity during anticipation of feared social stimuli in SAD. The current study examined the time course and magnitude of activity in threat processing brain regions during speech anticipation in socially anxious individuals and healthy controls (HC). Method Participants (SAD n = 58; HC n = 16) underwent functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) during which they completed a 90s control anticipation task and 90s speech anticipation task.
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“…They found that negative citations are rare, even among works that have been retracted. In another example, Nicholson et al ( 46 ) examined scientific papers cited in Wikipedia articles and found that – like the scientific literature as a whole – the vast majority presented findings that have not been subsequently verified. Similar analyses could also be applied to articles in the popular press.…”
Section: Discussionmentioning
confidence: 99%
Exaggerated anticipatory anxiety is common in social anxiety disorder (SAD). Neuroimaging studies have revealed altered neural activity in response to social stimuli in SAD, but fewer studies have examined neural activity during anticipation of feared social stimuli in SAD. The current study examined the time course and magnitude of activity in threat processing brain regions during speech anticipation in socially anxious individuals and healthy controls (HC). Method Participants (SAD n = 58; HC n = 16) underwent functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) during which they completed a 90s control anticipation task and 90s speech anticipation task.
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“…By way of example, the article, "PRESS peer review of electronic search strategies: 2015 guideline statement" [23], has been cited by 493 articles in PubMed, 835 publications with 590 extracted citation statements in Scite, 740 publications in Scopus, 671 publications in Web of Science, and 1,078, according to Google Scholar (as of June 4, 2021). As Scite's founders note, "Our results should be considered with caution given the limitations of the model precision, the current limited coverage of articles analyzed by scite, and the fact that articles that could not be linked to a DOI in the data set were excluded" [14].…”
Section: Use Scite With a Grain Of Saltmentioning
confidence: 91%
Exaggerated anticipatory anxiety is common in social anxiety disorder (SAD). Neuroimaging studies have revealed altered neural activity in response to social stimuli in SAD, but fewer studies have examined neural activity during anticipation of feared social stimuli in SAD. The current study examined the time course and magnitude of activity in threat processing brain regions during speech anticipation in socially anxious individuals and healthy controls (HC). Method Participants (SAD n = 58; HC n = 16) underwent functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) during which they completed a 90s control anticipation task and 90s speech anticipation task.
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