Wikipedia Education Program/The Core (Ambassadors)/14
Wikipedia Education Program
The Core
Beyond the Five Pillars…
No original research
Wikipedia is a tertiary source of information—based on a collection of secondary sources writing about a primary source. Simply put, Wikipedia is not a place to publish original research, but rather is a summary of what has been written in reliable sources about the original topic or research (think: Literature Review).
Students and professors may struggle with this principle. Typically, college assignments require students to do original research, have a point of view and argue it. Wikipedia is a tertiary source—a summary of secondary information about a given topic.
