Can I use Google or Wikipedia for my research paper? (2024)

FAQs

Can I use Google or Wikipedia for my research paper? ›

For research papers, you need authoritative resources, so it is absolutely necessary to consult scholarly sources. Anyone can search Google or find a Wikipedia article. To demonstrate academic skill and critical thinking, it is important to go beyond these basic tools.

Wikipedia is not a reliable source for academic writing or research.

Generally, Google and Wikipedia are both acceptable places to start searching for concepts for your research paper. However, they are not good places from which to cite scholarly and reputable research information.

Most academics agree that you shouldn't cite Wikipedia as a source in your academic writing, and universities often have rules against doing so.

You should cite the source of the photo as an ethical matter, but you won't be violating copyright law if you fail to do so. The photo might have a Creative Commons license or something similar granting permission to use it for noncommercial use. (I presume a scientific review is noncommercial.)

Wikipedia is not considered scholarly. Wikipedia acknowledges that its information is not properly vetted. The site has included hoaxes. People have created and edited pages to drive traffic to other websites.

Permission is granted to copy, distribute and/or modify Wikipedia's text under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License and, unless otherwise noted, the GNU Free Documentation License, unversioned, with no invariant sections, front-cover texts, or back-cover texts.

Can I use websites in academic study? The short answer is "yes - but you must use them appropriately". Websites can provide valuable evidence to support your discussion, just like books or journal articles.

It is acceptable to use internet sources as secondary sources for research papers. Carefully follow the candidate publication's style guide when doing so. It is incorrect to use the internet as a primary source for anything.

Citavi: Designed for Individuals and Teams

It helps researchers organize, collaborate, take notes, and write and manage citations. Annotate PDFs to save project ideas. Create draft outlines and write faster and more efficiently. Individuals or teams can use Citavi.

Why can't I use Wikipedia as a source? ›

Here's why: Wikipedia content is not necessarily written by subject experts, and may be inadequate or incorrect. Articles in Wikipedia may be changed or deleted between viewings.

Because Wikipedia cannot be considered a reliable source, the use of Wikipedia is not accepted in many schools and universities in writing a formal paper, and some educational institutions have banned it as a primary source while others have limited its use to only a pointer to external sources.

You can use them on any appropriate page on Wikipedia. You can even use them outside of Wikipedia, such as on a website, in printed material, anywhere! All "free" image licenses allow these uses, provided you follow the license's terms for attribution and usage, as there could be penalties if you don't.

You generally DO need permission to:

Reprint a copyrighted image from the Internet (assume all images are copyrighted unless stated otherwise) Make modifications to a copyrighted image or an image released under a Creative Commons No Derivatives license.

The answer from Wikipedia is clear: at least in research projects, “you probably shouldn't be citing Wikipedia”. Why's that? Well, Wikipedia, like other encyclopedias and handbooks, is a tertiary source. Tertiary sources are those that take their information from other primary and secondary sources.

Read critically.

Wikipedia has tools to help you critically examine what you read. Read the sources cited by the article to see if the information is consistent. Check the history of an article for significant revisions, consider why those revisions were made, and learn about who made the revisions.