Can I Use Wikipedia Content In My Book?

by | Last updated on January 24, 2024

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Can I use Wikipedia content in my book? If you want to use Wikipedia's text materials in your own books/articles/web sites or other publications,

you can generally do so, but you must comply with one of the licenses that Wikipedia's text is licensed under

. Many of the media files on Wikipedia are also reusable.

Is Wikipedia content copyrighted?


The text of Wikipedia is copyrighted (automatically, under the Berne Convention) by Wikipedia editors and contributors

and is formally licensed to the public under one or several liberal licenses.

Are you allowed to use a Wikipedia article in your paper?

Many colleges and universities, as well as public and private secondary schools, have policies that prohibit students from using Wikipedia as their source for doing research papers, essays, or equivalent assignments. This is because Wikipedia can be edited by anyone at any moment.

Can you use Wikipedia as a source?


Wikipedia is not a reliable source

for elsewhere on Wikipedia. As a user-generated source, it can be edited by anyone at any time, and any information it contains at a particular time could be vandalism, a work in progress, or simply incorrect.

Can Wikipedia be used commercially?


Wikipedia's content is licensed under Creative Commons, the one that allows commercial usage

.

Is it plagiarizing using Wikipedia?

As long as the licensing requirements for attribution are met (see the guideline for specifics), copying content (including text, images, and citations) from one Wikipedia article to another or from one language Wikipedia to another is not as long as attribution is provided via the edit summaries.

Is Wikipedia non commercial?

Non-commercial licenses


They may still be used under the doctrine of fair use in the English Wikipedia

; some other projects, such as the Spanish Wikipedia and the Wikimedia Commons, prohibit them entirely.

Can I quote from Wikipedia?

The answer from Wikipedia is clear: at least in research projects, “

you probably shouldn't be citing Wikipedia

”. Why's that? Well, Wikipedia, like other encyclopedias and handbooks, is a tertiary source. Tertiary sources are those that take their information from other primary and secondary sources.

Can Wikipedia be a written reference?

Wikipedia is a useful source of background information that students often use in the early stages of research. However,

it's often not considered a reliable source to cite in your academic writing

. If you're certain you're allowed to cite Wikipedia, the citation usually includes: Title of the article.

Can I use Britannica as a source?


Trust Britannica Library as a reliable source

with objective, fact-check, and unbiased content that is written by experts and vetted through rigorous editorial process. Take a look at our editorial process which serves as the backbone of our products, experiences, and content.

Why is Wikipedia not good for academic writing?


Wikipedia is not considered scholarly

. Wikipedia acknowledges that its information is not properly vetted. The site has included hoaxes. People have created and edited pages to drive traffic to other websites.

Is there an alternative to Wikipedia?

Encyclopedia Britannica Online

Wikipedia has grown to overshadow the encyclopedia in the Age of the Internet, but Britannica is still one of the most highly respected reference materials available.

Yes, Britannica is a reliable source, and is certainly more reliable than Wikipedia

.

What is not allowed on Wikipedia?

This applies to usernames, articles, drafts, categories, files, talk page discussions, templates, and user pages. Therefore, content hosted in Wikipedia is not for:

Advocacy, propaganda, or recruitment of any kind

: commercial, political, scientific, religious, national, sports-related, or otherwise.

Can I copy images from Wikipedia?


Public domain images are not copyrighted, and copyright law does not restrict their use in any way

. Wikipedia pages, including non-English language pages, are hosted on a server in the United States, so US law governs whether a Wikipedia image is in the public domain.

How do I copy a Wikipedia page?

  1. Create the destination folder, if it does not already exist.
  2. In the source folder, create a Wiki TOC web part (it may be named “Pages” by default), if one does not already exist.
  3. Select Copy from the triangle pulldown menu on the Wiki TOC web part.
  4. Select the destination folder from the tree.

Can we use Wikipedia content on my blog?

Wikipedia's text content, in a nutshell, can be used under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution Share-Alike license (CC-BY-SA); unless otherwise indicated, it can also be used under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License.

Who owns Wikipedia content?

Who owns the Web site? Wikipedia's tech framework is supported by a non-profit parent organization, the

Wikimedia Foundation Inc

, which also supports Wikipedia's sister projects, including Wiktionary (a wiki dictionary), Wikibooks (textbooks), and others, and owns all of their domain names.

What is fair use Wikipedia?

Fair use is

a doctrine in United States law that permits limited use of copyrighted material without having to first acquire permission from the copyright holder

.

Can Wikipedia be edited by anyone?

Wikipedia is a wiki, meaning

anyone can edit nearly any page and improve articles immediately

. You do not need to register to do this, and anyone who has edited is known as a Wikipedian or editor. Small edits add up, and every editor can be proud to have made Wikipedia better for all.

How do you cite Wikipedia with no author?

When citing Wikipedia in-text,

all you need is the article title

. This is because Wikipedia is a collaborative website and there is no author or published date. The citation, which will be in parentheses, will have the title of the page or article in quotations.

How cite a website with no author?

As per the MLA 9 handbook, if you don't find an author's name, don't state it as “Anonymous.” Instead, omit the author's name and fill in the next element of the works-cited entry:

the name of the webpage. “Title of the Article or Individual Page.” Website Name, Publisher, Day Month Year Published, URL

.

Can I use images from Wikipedia in my thesis?

The license of individual figures on WIkipedia should be checked. That is definitely a factor to consider.

Any image you use at least needs to be checked for copyright and permission from the author

. Depending on the image and how good it is, it might be easier to re-make a new version in your own style.

Can I use Wikipedia for thesis?


No, you should not

. Wikipedia is not a scientific source. The scientific source is the primary peer-reviewed reference that wikipedia's articles cite. You can (and should) use Wikipedia for a general understanding of a concept, but you should (read and) cite the primary source of the particular concept.

Is it OK to cite Encyclopedia Britannica?

In general, information in the Encyclopedia Brittanica should count as reasonably reliable general information.

You must cite it if you quote directly, and probably should in any case at all questionable.

Can I cite encyclopedia?

Encyclopedia or Dictionary Entry In Print – Known

Author


Author's Last Name, First Name.

“Title of Entry.” Title of Encyclopedia or Dictionary, edited by Editor's First Name Last Name, Edition if given and not first edition, vol. Volume Number, Publisher Name, Year of Publication, pp. First Page-Last Page.

Is it OK to cite an encyclopedia?


You should provide citations for each encyclopedia entry that you use in your essay

. A good example is Wikipedia, an online encyclopedia. You would cite each article from Wikipedia separately, even though they come from the same source.

How do Wikipedia make money?

Since Wikipedia does not carry any advertisements, it depends almost entirely on donations made by its millions of readers around the globe.

A tiny slice of the website's total revenue is generated from merchandise, including t-shirts, pencils, notebooks, and pins embossed with Wikipedia's branding

.

Why is school blocked Wikipedia?

The entire Warren Hills Regional School District in New Jersey has also blocked access from all school computers. The basic problem, according to officials, is that

Wikipedia's unverified accuracy and ease of use are making it too tempting for students to use as a primary source

.

Is it easy to edit Wikipedia?

Is Wikipedia getting worse?

The number of active editors on the English-language Wikipedia peaked in 2007 at more than 51,000 and

has been declining ever since as the supply of new ones got choked off

. This past summer only 31,000 people could be considered active editors.

Is Britannica more reliable than Wikipedia?

Only 4 serious errors were found in Wikipedia, and 4 in Britannica. The study concluded that “

Wikipedia comes close to Britannica in terms of the accuracy of its science entries

“, although Wikipedia's articles were often “poorly structured”.

What is the difference between Encyclopedia Britannica and Wikipedia?

How much does it cost to get a Wikipedia page?

How Can I Create A Wikipedia Account? The cost to create a Wikipedia account ranges between

$250 to $3,000

; however, many of its articles may even cost a minimum of $400 to a maximum of $800.

Can I make myself a Wikipedia page?


You can, but you shouldn't

. Wikipedia rules say that you should not create your own Wikipedia page. Doing so would be a conflict of interest. If you decide to write one anyway, and it gets taken down, it is very difficult to get a new page because your name will be flagged.

Can you get banned from viewing Wikipedia?


Users may be globally banned from the English Wikipedia and all other Wikimedia projects

, either by the broader Wikimedia community or by the Wikimedia Foundation. In case of the former, English Wikipedia users will be explicitly invited to participate in the Meta-Wiki discussion to ban the user in question.

Can we use Wikipedia images for a book?


You can use them on any appropriate page on Wikipedia

. You can even use them outside of Wikipedia, such as on a website, in printed material, anywhere! All “free” image licenses allow these uses, provided you follow the license's terms for attribution and usage, as there could be penalties if you don't.

Charlene Dyck
Author
Charlene Dyck
Charlene is a software developer and technology expert with a degree in computer science. She has worked for major tech companies and has a keen understanding of how computers and electronics work. Sarah is also an advocate for digital privacy and security.