You've probably heard many times that you shouldn't cite Wikipedia itself - and you shouldn't! However, that doesn't mean you can't use Wikipedia responsibly to find information about something or start researching a topic in more depth.
Here are some things you can do with Wikipedia:
- Evaluate the quality of the article you're looking at so you can determine if it's worth looking at or you should start elsewhere
- Use it as a summary about a topic you're unfamiliar with.
- Find the names of experts who may have written about the topic.
- Identify useful keywords or additional terminology or concepts that you may wish to use when searching for sources.
- Use the reference list to locate publications of interest.
Once you've done those things, you can move further into other academic resources:
- Use the HSLS ebooks by subject list to find more in-depth information about your topic.
- Use PittCat to search Pitt library holdings for books, book chapters, journal articles, etc.
- Search in PubMed or another database using keywords or author names you found on Wikipedia.
- Use Web of Science or Google Scholar to search for articles that have cited one of the articles you found in the reference list.
- For a cutting edge or rapidly changing topic, check preprint servers like medRxiv or bioRxiv and look at ClinicalTrials.gov for ongoing clinical trials on your subject. Note that preprints are articles that have not yet been peer-reviewed, so you should examine them carefully if using them.
- To get free access to an article or book that Pitt does not hold or is behind a paywall, use our document delivery service!
- Look for additional information from reliable health information resources like those from the CDC, WHO, NIH, ECRI Guidelines Trust, and national and international professional organizations.