Wikipedia as a Resource for Chemistry

Wikipedia has become a valuable reference source—too important to ignore, yet often poorly understood in the academic community. This chapter describes how chemical educators, chemists and students can use this vast resource, wisely and with a critical eye, when researching for routine work, papers or term projects. It explains how the chemistry content on Wikipedia is written, organized and checked, and how the articles are laid out. The text describes several useful strategies when using Wikipedia to find specific types of information. It also explains how to design writing assignments based on students' contributions to Wikipedia.