Open access science in Wikipedia

As one of the largest online encyclopedias, Wikipedia is essential in conveying scientific information. To ensure the reliability of its information, Wikipedia relies on a variety of sources, including scientific articles. In this study, we assess the Open Access (OA) status of scientific articles cited in Wikipedia. To reach this goal, we mainly use the Wikipedia Citations dataset and equip it with Open Access status data from OpenAlex and journal information from Scimago. We find that 42% of all citations to scientific articles in Wikipedia are to Open Access articles, and the distribution of different Open Access types cited by Wikipedia is similar to that observed in academic literature: Bronze, Green, Gold, Hybrid. The scientific disciplines of biology, physics and mathematics have a high proportion of OA articles cited in Wikipedia, while history is the lowest. Our results provide a preliminary picture of how scientific articles shaped Wikipedia from the perspective of Open Access.