Editorial Policy

• 1 Editorial Policy
• 2 Citations
• 3 How do I insert a citation and reference to an external article/document/resource ?

Editorial Policy

One of the most frequent questions that we get asked is: ‘how do we know that the information on wikiADAPT is reliable?’ Below you will find some answers!

But before we attempt to answer this question it is useful to note that the follow on question to the one above is: what do you consider to be 'reliable'? Our guess is that the response to that question will vary between users – some might want the information to be peer-reviewed by academics; others might want to know that what is being suggested has been tested in a similar context to their own; others might want to feel confident that there is broad consensus that it is 'good enough' information to act on; while others yet might trust the content if it has been generated by someone they personally know. With that in mind we explain below a number of different ways we are working to ensure that wikiADAPT contains information that people feel confident in using:

Registration: This is the first check. In order to add information to the wiki you have to first register. This allows us to check that people registering to edit are not joke accounts (i.e. they have a valid email address and a genuine interest in climate change) and to reject spam accounts. Most of the people we have register are from universities, NGOs or research organisations.

Sources: Many of the contributions are based on work from peer reviewed articles or reputable research programmes with internal review processes (for example the Netherlands Climate Assistance Programme). Many other pages use references in the same way that an academic paper would, showing where the information has come from. We also encourage contributors to sign their contributions to help build trust. The history page 'behind' the wiki article shows a list of users that have edited the page, so it is possible to track back and view a brief bio of the person to make a judgment on their credibility.

Monitoring: Our editorial team in SEI Oxford keeps an eye on new contributions to the wiki (through the recent changes page) so that if a contribution is abusive, the content dubious or the article completely off-topic then we can either remove the page or place a banner on the page indicating that the content needs verification - in much the same way that wikipedia does. This is not to say that we will remove content that we disagree with unless it is judged to be unreasonable; if there are conflicting approaches then it is up to users to decide which they’d like to take. We may, however, recommend something as ‘a weADAPT approach to X’.

It is worth noting that comparisons of Wikipedia and the Encyclopedia Britannica find that they both contain similar numbers of errors, because users are quick to improve content and report errors; the community works to enhance its reliability. To help this process we have created a ‘report dubious content’ form which users can use, or equally we encourage users to edit content themselves to improve its reliability.

We also undertake periodic trawls through the content of wikiADAPT to check quality and to update any material which has become out of date.

Featured Articles: These are articles which the editorial team consider to be very good in terms of quality (and interest!). Featured articles are therefore particularly trust-worthy.

wikiADAPT will use banners to provide information about pages in much the same way that wikipedia does. For example, articles which need references will have banners, as will those which need more work on them, or which are opinion pieces, an example is shown below. This should allow users to clearly see which the most reliable articles are.

If you have any concerns about specific content then please also email us

Citations

If you use material from wikiADAPT, we ask you to acknowledge the source in the following style:

Page Name. (Date last modified-you can find this in the history of the page). In wikiADAPT, the collaborative platform on climate adaptation. (Date information retrieved), from www.wikiADAPT.org/Pagename.

So an example for the Mapping vulnerability page would be: Mapping vulnerability (26th September 2007).In wikiADAPT, the collaborative platform on climate adaptation. Accessed 06 November 2007 from www.wikiadapt.org/mapping_vulnerability

How do I insert a citation and reference to an external article/document/resource ?

This is done by enclosing the reference with (opening) and (closing) tags. The reference should be placed directly in the paragraph at the position where you would like the citation to appear. For example, the following text:

The table below, adapted from Lee (1999)Lee, L,N. (1999). Appraising Adaptive Management. Conservation Ecology 3(2): [online] URL:http://www.consecol.org/vol3/iss2/art3/

would appear as:

The table below, adapted from Lee (1999)Lee, L,N. (1999). Appraising Adaptive Management. Conservation Ecology 3(2): [online] URL:http://www.consecol.org/vol3/iss2/art3/.

The reference corresponding to this citation will appear at a point lower down in the page, where the tag should be used to produce a reference list. The example above produces the following single item reference list :