Nature Responds to Britannica

Scientific journal posts a response to encyclopedia firm's lengthy tirade, telling them in short they will not retract their original Wikipedia comparison study findings.

In response to the twenty page note put out yesterday by Encyclopedia Britannica regarding issues it had with scientific journal Nature’s December comparison study of the former’s science journal entries versus those of Wikipedia, the publication has posted its own two page response in which it defends its position and says it will not retract its original findings.

The opening paragraph of the response, of which the rest can be read here in PDF format, reads “In our issue of 15 December 2005 we published a news article that compared the Internet offerings of Encyclopaedia Britannica and Wikipedia on scientific topics (“Internet encyclopaedias go head to head”, Nature 438 (7070) p900-901). Encyclopaedia Britannica has now posted a lengthy response to this article on its website, accusing Nature of misrepresentation, sloppiness and indifference to scholarly standards, and calling on us to retract our article. We reject those accusations, and are confident our comparison was fair.”

For the rest of our original story regarding this conflict, please read yesterday’s article Britannica Comes Out Swinging at Nature.