Why and when Wikipedia is cited in journal articles?

Pupose: The aim of this research was to identify the motivations of citation to Wikipedia in scientific papers. Also, the number of citation to Wikipedia, location of citation, type of citing papers, subject of citing and cited articles were determined and compared in different subject fields.

Statistical population of this research included English articles indexed in Scopus in 2007 and 2012 that had cited to Wikipedia. 602 article were selected using stratified random sampling. Content analysis and bibliometric methods were used to carry out the research.

Results showed that there were 35 motivations for citing Wikipedia and the most frequent were providing general information and definition, statistics and concepts. The number of citations to Wikipedia had increased from 2007 to 2012. Citations to Wikipedia were often in sections such as introduction, body, materials and methods, and theoretical foundations of papers. Citing papers were often research papers. Computer sciences, internet and chemistry were the most cited subjects. These results show that citation to Wikipedia is often in the introductory sections of papers and is done to provide the facts, definitions, concepts and basic information. There were disciplinary differences in terms of citing Wikipedia.