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      References that anyone can edit: review of Wikipedia citations in peer reviewed health science literature

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          There is no author summary for this article yet. Authors can add summaries to their articles on ScienceOpen to make them more accessible to a non-specialist audience.

          Abstract

          Objectives To examine indexed health science journals to evaluate the prevalence of Wikipedia citations, identify the journals that publish articles with Wikipedia citations, and determine how Wikipedia is being cited.

          Design Bibliometric analysis.

          Study selection Publications in the English language that included citations to Wikipedia were retrieved using the online databases Scopus and Web of Science.

          Data sources To identify health science journals, results were refined using Ulrich’s database, selecting for citations from journals indexed in Medline, PubMed, or Embase. Using Thomson Reuters Journal Citation Reports, 2011 impact factors were collected for all journals included in the search.

          Data extraction Resulting citations were thematically coded, and descriptive statistics were calculated.

          Results 1433 full text articles from 1008 journals indexed in Medline, PubMed, or Embase with 2049 Wikipedia citations were accessed. The frequency of Wikipedia citations has increased over time; most citations occurred after December 2010. More than half of the citations were coded as definitions (n=648; 31.6%) or descriptions (n=482; 23.5%). Citations were not limited to journals with a low or no impact factor; the search found Wikipedia citations in many journals with high impact factors.

          Conclusions Many publications are citing information from a tertiary source that can be edited by anyone, although permanent, evidence based sources are available. We encourage journal editors and reviewers to use caution when publishing articles that cite Wikipedia.

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          Most cited references16

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          Patient-oriented cancer information on the internet: a comparison of wikipedia and a professionally maintained database.

          A wiki is a collaborative Web site, such as Wikipedia, that can be freely edited. Because of a wiki's lack of formal editorial control, we hypothesized that the content would be less complete and accurate than that of a professional peer-reviewed Web site. In this study, the coverage, accuracy, and readability of cancer information on Wikipedia were compared with those of the patient-orientated National Cancer Institute's Physician Data Query (PDQ) comprehensive cancer database. For each of 10 cancer types, medically trained personnel scored PDQ and Wikipedia articles for accuracy and presentation of controversies by using an appraisal form. Reliability was assessed by using interobserver variability and test-retest reproducibility. Readability was calculated from word and sentence length. Evaluators were able to rapidly assess articles (18 minutes/article), with a test-retest reliability of 0.71 and interobserver variability of 0.53. For both Web sites, inaccuracies were rare, less than 2% of information examined. PDQ was significantly more readable than Wikipedia: Flesch-Kincaid grade level 9.6 versus 14.1. There was no difference in depth of coverage between PDQ and Wikipedia (29.9, 34.2, respectively; maximum possible score 72). Controversial aspects of cancer care were relatively poorly discussed in both resources (2.9 and 6.1 for PDQ and Wikipedia, respectively, NS; maximum possible score 18). A planned subanalysis comparing common and uncommon cancers demonstrated no difference. Although the wiki resource had similar accuracy and depth as the professionally edited database, it was significantly less readable. Further research is required to assess how this influences patients' understanding and retention.
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            eLearning among Canadian anesthesia residents: a survey of podcast use and content needs

            Background Podcasts are increasingly being used in medical education. In this study, we conducted a survey of Canadian anesthesia residents to better delineate the content needs, format preferences, and usage patterns among anesthesia residents. Methods 10/16 Canadian anesthesia program directors, representing 443/659 Canadian anesthesia residents, allowed their residents to be included in the study. 169/659 (24%) residents responded to our survey. A 17-item survey tool developed by the investigators was distributed by email eliciting information on patterns of podcast use, preferred content, preferred format, and podcast adjuncts perceived to increase knowledge retention. Results 60% (91/151) had used medical podcasts with 67% of these users spending up to 1 hour per week on podcasts. 72.3% of respondents selected ‘ability to review materials whenever I want’ was selected by the majority of respondents (72%) as the reason they found podcasts to be valuable. No clear preference was shown for audio, video, or slidecast podcasts. Physiology (88%) and pharmacology (87%) were the most requested basic science topics while regional anesthesia (84%), intensive care (79%) and crisis resource management (86%) were the most requested for procedural, clinical and professional topics respectively. Respondents stated they would most likely view podcasts that contained procedural skills, journal article summaries and case presentations and that were between 5-15 minutes in duration A significantly greater proportion of senior residents (81%) requested podcasts on ‘pediatric anesthesia’ compared to junior residents 57% (P = 0.007). Conclusions The majority of respondents are using podcasts. Anesthesia residents have preferred podcast content, types, length and format that educators should be cognizant of when developing and providing podcasts.
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              Quality of web-based information on inflammatory bowel diseases.

              The Internet is the largest source of health information and is widely used by inflammatory bowel disease (IBD) patients. As information is largely unregulated, our objective was to evaluate the quality, readability, accuracy, and accessibility of the information concerning IBD available on the World Wide Web. The phrases "inflammatory bowel disease," "Crohn's disease," and "Ulcerative Colitis" were entered separately as search terms into the 6 most commonly used search engines. Sites were categorized as institutional, pharmaceutical, nonpharmaceutical commercial sites, charitable, support, or alternative medicine. Websites were evaluated for content quality using the validated DISCERN rating instrument. Readability was graded by the Flesch Reading Ease and the Flesch-Kincaid Grade Level score. Of the 76 websites evaluated by DISCERN, 43% of the sites were rated as excellent to good and 57% as fair to poor. Alternative medicine sites scored significant lower (P > 0.05) than institutional, pharmaceutical, and nonpharmaceutical commercial sites. There was no relation between a rating score and the position of a website on the search engine ranking. The median Flesch Reading Ease Score was 41.65 (range, 2.6-77.7) and 11.85 (range, 6.2-21.1) for the Flesch-Kincaid Grade Level. The quality of websites containing information on IBD varies widely. Most of the online material available is too difficult to comprehend for a substantial portion of the patient population, and good quality information may be beyond reach of the average information seeker. Copyright © 2009 Crohn's & Colitis Foundation of America, Inc.
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                Author and article information

                Contributors
                Role: staff anesthesiologist
                Role: research assistant
                Role: research assistant
                Role: director
                Role: research associate
                Role: research assistant
                Role: staff anesthesiologist
                Journal
                BMJ
                BMJ
                bmj
                BMJ : British Medical Journal
                BMJ Publishing Group Ltd.
                0959-8138
                1756-1833
                2014
                6 March 2014
                : 348
                : g1585
                Affiliations
                [1 ]Department of Anesthesiology, Children’s Hospital of Eastern Ontario, University of Ottawa, 401 Smyth Road, Ottawa, ON, Canada, K1H 8L1
                [2 ]Department of Anesthesiology, Ottawa Hospital Research Institute, Ottawa
                [3 ]Health Sciences Library, University of Ottawa, Ottawa
                [4 ]Allan Waters Family Simulation Centre, Li Ka Shing Knowledge Institute, St Michael’s Hospital, Toronto, ON, Canada
                [5 ]Department of Surgery, St Michael’s Hospital, University of Toronto, Toronto
                [6 ]Department of Anesthesiology, The Ottawa Hospital, University of Ottawa, Ottawa
                Author notes
                Correspondence to: M D Bould  dbould@ 123456cheo.on.ca
                Article
                boum014388
                10.1136/bmj.g1585
                3944683
                24603564
                47d162ef-178d-476c-b9ec-f99441462c21
                © Bould et al 2014

                This is an Open Access article distributed in accordance with the Creative Commons Attribution Non Commercial (CC BY-NC 3.0) license, which permits others to distribute, remix, adapt, build upon this work non-commercially, and license their derivative works on different terms, provided the original work is properly cited and the use is non-commercial. See: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/3.0/.

                History
                : 10 February 2014
                Categories
                Research

                Medicine
                Medicine

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