The academic credibility of the site

Members of the academic community they rightly raise a number of issues around the academic credibility of the Psychology Wiki.

They rightly praise articles for their high academic standards but want to know how they can be sure about the quality of any particular reference that, for example, a student might quote in an exam paper.. They cant keep checking the latest version of a page because they fear it may have been degraded since they last looked at it.

Part of the value of the Psychology Wiki is that material can be continually updated and added to, but this dynamic benefit prejudices its academic authority on an ongoing basis.

It has been said that the Wiki is continually under 'peer review' and clear cases of quality degrading vandalism can be tracked and eradicated quickly. While this is true there is a conterargument saying that the Wiki is not so much 'peer reviewed' as 'publicly reviewed' and this is a different matter and does not alway ensure top quality academic standards. While for most practical purposes most of the time the quality of articles will eventually be authorative enough, we need some system of authoratative institutional approval, akin to the stamp that publication in a journal affords.

So how can we maintain the benefits of flexibility and updating with the certain stamp of academic authority suitable for academic referencing. The answer seems to be to 'lock' a version of a page once it has been approved as authoratative by an appropriate academic panel, but allow another version to continue to be worked on. This might then be reviewed at a later date and subsequently saved as the new authoratative version.

Some thought needs to be given to the practicalities of these arrangements. There seems a clear role here for the academic societies but they would probably need to be coordinated on an international basis.

Please us the discussion page to raise further issues or edit this page accordingly.