Trial reportBMJ open2020
Adding evidence of the effects of treatments into relevant Wikipedia pages: a randomised trial.
Trial report in BMJ open, 2020. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 6 papers.
What it found
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The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
6 citing papers in PubMed.
- An integrative systematic review on interventions to improve layperson's ability to identify trustworthy digital health information.PLOS digital health · 2024Article
- Citations in Wikipedia for understanding research reach.Journal of the Medical Library Association : JMLA · 2024Article
- Wikipedia page views for health research: a review.Frontiers in big data · 2023Review
- Library instruction and Wikipedia: investigating students' perceived information literacy, lifelong learning, and social responsibility through Wikipedia editing.Journal of the Medical Library Association : JMLA · 2022Article
- Enhancing trust in clinical decision support systems: a framework for developers.BMJ health & care informatics · 2021Article
- How the Field of Infectious Diseases Can Leverage Digital Strategy and Social Media Use During a Pandemic.Open forum infectious diseases · 2021Article
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
22 authors.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
objectivesTo investigate the effects of adding high-grade quantitative evidence of outcomes of treatments into relevant Wikipedia pages on further information-seeking behaviour by the use of routinely collected data.
settingWikipedia, Cochrane summary pages and the Cochrane Library.
designRandomised trial.
participantsWikipedia pages which were highly relevant to up-to-date Cochrane Schizophrenia systematic reviews that contained a Summary of Findings table.
interventionsEligible Wikipedia pages in the intervention group were seeded with tables of best evidence of the effects of care and hyperlinks to the source Cochrane review. Eligible Wikipedia pages in the control group were left unchanged.
main outcome measuresRoutinely collected data on access to the full text and summary web page (after 12 months).
resultsWe randomised 70 Wikipedia pages (100% follow-up). Six of the 35 Wikipedia pages in the intervention group had the tabular format deleted during the study but all pages continued to report the same data within the text. There was no evidence of effect on either of the coprimary outcomes: full-text access adjusted ratio of geometric means 1.30, 95% CI: 0.71 to 2.38; page views 1.14, 95% CI: 0.6 to 2.13. Results were similar for all other outcomes, with exception of Altmetric score for which there was some evidence of clear effect (1.36, 95% CI: 1.05 to 1.78).
conclusionsThe pursuit of fair balance within Wikipedia healthcare pages is impressive and its reach unsurpassed. For every person who sought and clicked the reference on the 'intervention' Wikipedia page to seek more information (the primary outcome), many more are likely to have been informed by the page alone. Enriching Wikipedia content is, potentially, a powerful way to improve health literacy and it is possible to test the effects of seeding pages with evidence. This trial should be replicated, expanded and developed. TRIAL REGISTRATION NUMBER: IRCT2017070330407N2.
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Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.