5 ms·
If you're talking about something like Encyclopaedia Britannica or the ODNB, they are/were extensively peer-reviewed. I have seen plenty of references to both i
by biofox 4y ago
If you're talking about something like Encyclopaedia Britannica or the ODNB, they are/were extensively peer-reviewed. I have seen plenty of references to both in scholarly literature. Infact, for some niche or historical topics, I often find my old print edition of EB to be more useful than Wikipedia.
- PaulDavisThe1st 4y agoActual studies (even back in 2005) comparing EB and Wikipedia find Wikipedia to be at least as accurate as EB. The level of "peer review" in EB is generally overstated in the popular conception of that work.
- bluGill 4y agoYes, and in school (wikipedia didn't exist until after I graduated) I still was not allowed to reference an encyclopedia. We had them in the library and they were considered at best a good introduction before you find real source material.
- eesmith 4y agoAs a concrete example, I've come across several papers who cite Claude Shannon's entry on Information Theory, from Encyclopaedia Britannica vol. 12, p. 246b, and recommend it as a good starting point in the field. It's available at https://archive.org/details/encyclopdiabrita12chic/page/n307/mode/2up?q=shannon https://archive.org/details/encyclopdiabrita12chic/page/n307... . I think it's a better intro than the Wikipedia one for someone looking for an intro overview. The Wikipedia has a bunch more cross-references and goes into more depth.