Fred Bauder wrote:
...If
Wikipedia is...a
*starting* source from which you launch your digging, using its article
citations to
ferret out more details, then Wikipedia should be cited, whether you
quote it
or not.
Will Johnson
Exactly. I don't think anything more than a statement that the Wikipedia
article was consulted is necessary, if actual material from it is not
used, but the viewing and reading of the Wikipedia article "to get ideas"
or "identify sources" is precisely the issue. It is the "getting of
ideas" without crediting the source of the ideas which is the issue.
I don't see why Wikipedia should be special-cased here. It's not common
practice in academic publishing to cite all the research tools you used
in arriving at your actual sources. I don't usually cite Lexis-Nexis
when I look up an article through it, or JSTOR, or my local reference
librarian, or Wikipedia, or Britannica, or some website with a list of
interesting articles, or Google. If all Wikipedia was used for was as
exploratory research to get pointers into the literature, then it'd be
uncommon practice to cite it. Heck, it's not even common to cite
journal-published survey papers used in that manner, unless you're
citing the survey itself as an overview. As a reviewer I would actually
probably recommend such citations be taken out, if they were
present---the purpose of citations in an academic paper is not to
retrace the idiosyncratic path of your personal research history.
-Mark