User:FULBERT/sandbox/AR

This is not an encyclopedia article

It is a sandbox, or development page, of User:FULBERT

This page includes some musings related to the nonprofit, academic journal publisher, Annual Reviews.

Annual Reviews is a good source for meeting Wikipedia's goals

Reliable Sources

The mission of Annual Reviews is: "Annual Reviews is a nonprofit publisher dedicated to synthesizing and integrating knowledge for the progress of science and the benefit of society" [emphasis added]. This is fully aligned with the mission of the Wikimedia Foundation (which hosts the online encyclopedia, Wikipedia): "The mission of the Wikimedia Foundation is to empower and engage people around the world to collect and develop educational content under a free license or in the public domain, and to disseminate it effectively and globally" [emphasis added]. They both seek to bring knowledge to society, and while Annual Reviews publishes research to demonstrate the most credible and reliable information across sub-disciplines, Wikipedia makes use of that high level of sourcing to support claims made by article editors.

The articles published by Annual Reviews are peer invited, and while not blind reviewed as common in academic journals, their level of quality that is maintained by not accepting article submissions and only publishing articles that are invited from disciplinary experts. The result is their journals appear at the highest levels of Impact Factor Rankings. These become a natural fit to support Wikipedia verifiability (we can check what source was used to support this or that claim) and reliability (a reliable source is a third-party, published source with a reputation for fact-checking and accuracy). As the 52 journals Annual Reviews publishes are so highly ranked by Journal Citation Reports, they have the potential to be used across Wikipedia when citing statements and claims in articles. In many ways, it is surprising that this is not already being done, and therein lies an opportunity as the levels of evidence contained in general within these journals is often as high or higher than what already exists within many Wikipedia articles.

As Wikipedia is where the majority of people go online to learn about encyclopedic information (it is currently ranked the 13th highest traffic site in the world), using Annual Review journals to cite claims is a clear opportunity for scholarly expertise to impact readers where they already are online.

Using "Gender Stereotypes" to improve Gender role

The Wikipedia article Gender role is a highly sourced, highly trafficked article, with on average 971 page views each day. It receives a few edits a month, and while it is considered a level-5 Vital article, it is also classified as a C-class article, meaning it has opportunity for improvement as information is missing or it includes too much that is irrelevant. If we were seeking to improve this Wikipedia article, one place we could begin is with the article Gender Stereotypes by Naomi Ellemers (2018), which is published in the top ranked journal within the discipline of psychology, Annual Review of Psychology.

If we were to use this work to revise the Wikipedia Gender role article, it is clear that the entire first quarter of Ellemers' article would be helpful. The section on the Nature of Gender Stereotypes, which is what many people often think of when they consider this topic, is completely absent in the Wikipedia article. As this is central to how people consider the issue, it should go at the beginning of the Wikipedia article, right after the Background. I would include a new section, named The nature of gender stereotypes, and cite Ellemers' article along with some of the studies she cites (as long as I actually see them to substantiate the claims Ellemers makes). Aspects that would improve Wikipedia include the same well-cited sections she includes, including discussions of a kernel of truth, how stereotypes may be helpful or harmful, considerations on how they can be avoided, along with gendered expectations. Even how she started off this section, "the stereotypical perception that a particular feature characterizes membership of a specific group typically leads people to overemphasize differences between groups and underestimate variations within groups" would be a helpful way of beginning this explanation, something which is missing from this article itself.

The section in Ellemers that details Cognitive Functions could also be integrated within the section on Theories of gender as a social construct. Likewise, another opportunity to improve this Wikipedia article is in the section on Changing roles. This could be improved with information from the section in Ellemers' work on Resilience to Change and also How We Can Benefit from This Knowledge, both of which can be included as new sections within Changing roles.

Finally, given the six pages of References Ellemers cites, there are other, related opportunities to help improve Wikipedia with reliable and verifiable citations. An example of these can be found in the Wikipedia article section See also, where related articles can also potentially be improved (Gender studies and Role theory immediately leap to mind). One consideration, given how long this article already is, it may not be a bad opportunity to clean through the remainder of it, removing anything that is dated or not already sourced with high quality citations.

If the Ellemers article is an indication of the quality and high level of expertise found within journals published by Annual Reviews, then there are countless opportunities to bring high many more credible and reliable citations to Wikipedia. The more we are bold and improve articles with solid sources, the more accurate information people will have when they go in search of things new to them.