Mapping the backbone of the Humanities through the eyes of Wikipedia

TL;DR

This study adapts co-citation analysis to Wikipedia references to map relationships between humanities articles, providing a novel digital approach to understanding scholarly connections in collective knowledge.

Contribution

It introduces a method to apply co-citation theory to Wikipedia references, enabling the mapping of scholarly relationships in the digital environment of collective knowledge.

Findings

Mapped co-citation networks of humanities articles on Wikipedia

Identified key resources with high centrality measures

Provided statistical insights into Wikipedia's humanities references

Abstract

The present study aims to establish a valid method by which to apply the theory of co-citations to Wikipedia article references and, subsequently, to map these relationships between scientific papers. This theory, originally applied to scientific literature, will be transferred to the digital environment of collective knowledge generation. To this end, a dataset containing Wikipedia references collected from Altmetric and Scopus' Journal Metrics journals has been used. The articles have been categorized according to the disciplines and specialties established in the All Science Journal Classification (ASJC). They have also been grouped by journal of publication. A set of articles in the Humanities, comprising 25 555 Wikipedia articles with 41 655 references to 32 245 resources, has been selected. Finally, a descriptive statistical study has been conducted and co-citations have been mapped using networks and indicators of degree and betweenness centrality.