@article {Maggio797779, author = {Lauren A. Maggio, Associate Professor and Ryan M. Steinberg, Software Developer and Tiziano Piccardi, PhD student and John M. Willinsky, Professor}, title = {Reader Engagement with Wikipedia{\textquoteright}s Medical Content}, elocation-id = {797779}, year = {2019}, doi = {10.1101/797779}, publisher = {Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory}, abstract = {Wikipedia{\textquoteright}s extensive health and medical entries, maintained by WikiProject Medicine (WPM), are well supported by external links that provide readers with both a means of verifying the sources drawn upon and visiting those sources to learn more about a topic. In analysing how readers approach these links, data was collected on reader engagement with these links on WPM pages and on the rest of Wikipedia over a 32-day period. Readers of WPM pages were found to engage with external links more frequently than readers of the rest of Wikipedia, with WPM readers favoring hovering over a link and footnote clicking, compared to W readers who tended to click more external links per page viewed. Compared to readers of the rest of Wikipedia, WPM readers appear more attentive to the external link{\textquoteright}s function in verifying and authorizing Wikipedia content, than to the educational potential of examining the sources themselves.}, URL = {https://www.biorxiv.org/content/early/2019/10/18/797779}, eprint = {https://www.biorxiv.org/content/early/2019/10/18/797779.full.pdf}, journal = {bioRxiv} }