On Thu, 3 May 2012 20:51:27 -0400, Brian Butler wrote:
Yes -- Wikipedia is an exercise in knowledge mobilization, not
knowledge creation.
While there are some exceptions, most scholars are seeking to create
knowledge (and academic literature is part of that process -- hence
rarely is it useful for knowledge mobilization).
We don't expect a physicist (or an electrical engineer) to be able
wire a house (or even write instructions for how to do it) -- and we
don't expect an academic paper to useful for someone wanting to know
how to plan wiring.
Researchers/scholars, inventors, product developers and users are
usually different people.
This is actually not correct. At least in natural sciences we have
review articles - long papers which summarize the existing knowledge in
a particular field. These articles are usually much appreciated by the
community, get widely read and cited. My best cited paper - such a
review article - is cites 15 times more than my second best cited paper,
which is a regular article. We also write books (sometimes even
textbooks) and contribute to encyclopedias.
Cheers
Yaroslav
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