OER creation: Citations

7. Citations

The OER WMS user environment makes it possible to cite both individual parts of a text and list literature under a created text. In creating OER WMS, it is suitable to consider using thorough citations of individual statements, primarily in cases that involve resources that allow for large-scale anonymous and collaborative editing.

Even more important than who adds content may be how a portion of the content is cited (and by what quality of the source). The possibility to easily verify a statement in the form of adding a reference is another important benefit of these resources. Thorough citation is called for primarily when university-level materials are involved, as anonymous sources in which uncited information prevails should not be recommended to students. The following arguments for careful content citation when creating resources for university purposes are listed in the table below:

Table. Description of reasons for citing most statements with respected sources in anonymous resources such as Wikipedia (in Petiška, Moldan, 2019).

Reasons	Description of reasons
Problem of verifiability	We do not know the author of a specific statement and therefore we have no reason to believe him/her. If we can verify a statement from a respected source, we can trust it.
Problem of shared knowledge	a) It is impossible to define shared knowledge in sources used by students of various fields and various cultural environments; b) Students should primarily use those sources that have a minimum of shared knowledge and a maximum of new information.
Guidepost and summary of literature	Anonymous sources should be recommended at a university level only as a guidepost to other resources and for summaries of literature.
Context of information	Information without context is less valuable. Students should learn not only to describe reality (the cloudless sky is blue), but also to explain it (the cloudless sky is blue because molecules in the air disperse blue light from the sun more than they do red light). The source can help them understand the context.
Critical thinking	Students should understand that information without a source is less credible than information from a respected source.
The problem of plagiarism	Uncited statements can be acquired from other sources without acknowledgment. This kind of use is unethical and illegal.
The problem of citogenesis	The problem of circular reporting – an uncited statement in an anonymous source is used in another source and then reused to cite the original statement in an anonymous source.
Bad practices	Students who use uncited information from anonymous sources can learn bad practices in other parts of the learning process, e.g.: a) non-critical reception of information; b) plagiarism (they can learn to use information without references in their university theses).