Review of "Scholarpedia"

Web Review of “Scholarpedia”

Ray Etheridge

Western Washington University

Web Address: Scholarpedia (n.d.). Retrieved from the Scholarpedia Wiki: http://www.scholarpedia.org/
Name of Website: Scholarpedia, curator Dr. Eugene M. Izhikevich
Additional Information: ISSN 1941-6016 (online)
Sponsoring Organization: National Science Foundation

Review

The Scholarpedia website is clearly intended to mirror, as closely as possible, that of the “Wikipedia” website. However, it has one major change, in that it requires articles to be written by an accepted expert (publicly acknowledged or chosen by the Scholarpedia staff), peer reviewed and then submitted to an accepted curator before publication. While works-in-progress are accepted, they are clearly delineated from published articles that had been accepted and reviewed.
Although the level of scholarship is very high, the articles tend to be very limited to the fields of expert scholarship in astronomy, physics and mathematics. What works I reviewed are well written, easy to access-with the full set of Wikipedia search tools I would have expected nothing less-and convenient to use. While limited to a fairly select audience the Scholarpedia website is well organized and a good resource for a scholar interested in these subjects.