I facilitated a writing retreat last week, and in the course of a one-on-one consultation I mentioned how useful The Conversation would be as a resource for a writer’s developing paper. He had no idea what I was talking about. So, we looked it up and he was really excited at having shorter, but well-regarded and current, articles he could cite in his paper. It got me thinking: how many cool, academically acceptable resources are out there that writers and researchers don’t know about, that provide accessible ways in to more complex research contained in books, papers and reports?

The Conversation is my new academic Wikipedia. Before I get further into this, let me say that I love Wikipedia. It is accessible, generally well written and researched, and provides researchers and students especially with a way in to more difficult reading and research. What are stem cells? Ask Wikipedia. What is critical realism? Wikipedia has a basic, and generally correct answer.

You have to use a resource like this carefully, though. You cannot start and end your research into critical realism, for example, with Wikipedia. Why? Because it isn’t a peer-reviewed resource; it contains factual errors, and many pages note the need for verification, additional citations and checking of information. Thus, while Wikipedia is a way in to a complex subject like critical realism that can scope the basic premise of the theory, it’s origins and key authors, and even key terms, way more academic (read, peer reviewed and verified) research and reading will be needed before you can use critical realism in your research. You certainly cannot cite Wikipedia in a journal article or postgraduate thesis as your source of theoretical or conceptual framework!

One of the things I do love about Wikipedia, and this is bringing me round to the topic of this post, is that it is collaboratively written and developed. If you read a page and find an error, or an addition you can make, or citation you can add, you can do this. Research is a funny thing – we collaborate so much, and yet when we write (especially in the social sciences and humanities) single-authored publications are generally considered more prestigious than multiple-authored papers. Perhaps this is changing – I hope so – but here in South Africa I am criticised by our national research agency if I publish too many collaborative papers. Collaborative writing is more enjoyable (although it can be stressful relying on other people and meshing voices and writing styles), and it feels less lonely. It is also a good way to check your own bias, and make sure you are reading widely, and thinking critically – co-writers can also act as critical friends.

The Conversation, and other new, online academic resources, share many similarities with Wikipedia. They are often collaboratively written, with two or more researchers cited as authors; they are free to read and download; and they provide accessible ways in to more complex, and multi-layered research findings and writing. Like Wikipedia, you generally cannot start and end your research on, for example, multilingualism, or decolonial discourses in higher education with articles from The Conversation, but unlike Wikipedia, you can cite these articles as part of your learning about the topic you are researching and writing about.

The articles provide useful hyperlinks to journal articles, other web resources and places you can connect to with one click to find more academically acceptable resources to further read and consult as you research your topic. They are also peer-reviewed, although in a different manner to journal articles – they are checked before they are published, and authors can be asked to make corrections and revisions. So, they are a more reliable source of research-related information and learning.

The pieces in the Conversation are often distilled from larger pieces of research or projects that the authors are working on, and you can follow them onto Google Scholar or EBSCOHost etc, and find their academic papers and read these to get deeper into their research and thinking, using it to inform your own.

There are other cool Wikipedia-like resources that are more academically acceptable, and present verified and reliable information more consistently, such as Scholarpedia, Encyclopedia Britannica Online, and Infoplease. Use them wisely, as with all information in academia, but do use them, and tell others if they work for you – helpful academic resources are made to be used and shared!