Wikipedia:Further reading

This is an explanatory essay about Wikipedia:Manual of Style/Layout.

This page provides additional information about concepts in the page(s) it supplements. This page is not one of Wikipedia's policies or guidelines as it has not been thoroughly vetted by the community.

The Further reading section of an article contains a bulleted list of a reasonable number of works that a reader may consult for additional and more detailed coverage of the subject.

In articles based on scientific research, a chronological listing, with most recent items first, will allow the hasty or unsophisticated user to go directly to the most recent writing on a topic. In articles based on historical research older studies remain foundational and the alphabetical order is standard for historical bibliographies. An alphabetical list is often easier to assemble, and is more appropriate when writers on a topic are well known. With a chronological listing, if there is more than one edition of a text, the Wikipedia editor has to check dates of publication, reprinting, and revisions, to establish the correct order. These can often be checked easily on https://worldcat.org (WorldCat). If the Wikipedia author does not do this, readers are left to fend for themselves.

The section is one of the optional standard appendices and footers. These appear in a defined order at the bottom of the article.

It may include brief, neutral annotations. Some articles may also or instead have an External links section; editors will occasionally merge the two if both are very short. When an article contains both sections, some editors prefer to list websites and online works in the External links section. Works listed in a Further reading section are cited in the same citation style used by the rest of the article.

In articles with very many footnotes, it may not be obvious which references are suitable for further reading, and such entries may be selectively duplicated in Further reading.

Like the External links appendix, the inclusion of a Further reading section is optional, and many good articles, and more than half of all featured articles, omit it. As of 2016, this section was present in fewer than 3 percent of Wikipedia's articles.

Considerations for inclusion of entries

Topical

A large part, if not all, of the work should be directly about the subject of the article. Works that are not entirely about the subject of the article should have notes that identify the relevant part of the work (e.g., "Chapter 7").

Preference is normally given to works that cover the whole subject of the article rather than a specific aspect of the subject, and to works whose contents are entirely about the subject of the article, rather than only partly.

Reliable

Editors most frequently choose high-quality reliable sources. However, other sources may be appropriate, including: historically important publications; creative works or primary sources discussed extensively in the article; and seminal, but now outdated, scientific papers. When such sources are listed, the relevance of the work should be explained by a brief annotation.

A good starting point is Google Scholar, which indexes the published secondary scholarly literature (books, articles, academic reports etc.) For example, on "Yellow Journalism" it currently lists 14,300 books and articles here. A very small selection about one per 1000 would produce 14 articles for a Further Reading list. Google Scholar also provides a link to an online publication, such as Google Books or JSTOR. And it counts the number of citations that link to a specified item, so that we know how frequently other scholars cite the item.

Balanced

Works named in this section should present a neutral view of the subject, or, if works of a particular point of view are presented, the section should present a balance of various points of view.

Balance is not merely a matter of listing the same number of sources for each point of view, but should be measured relative to the views held by high-quality and scholarly sources. If a large number of high-quality sources reflect a given view, then the Further reading section should normally reflect that tendency. Significant minority points of view should usually be included, subject to the same quality guidelines on reliability, topicality, and the limited size of the section. Publications about a tiny minority view need not be included at all. Notable and important works should not be excluded solely to achieve numerical balance.

Further reading sections are not to be used for pushing a point of view.

Available access

The goal is to help readers who want to study the topic further. We can assume that readers have access to the internet and also to a local librarian. Cited items that are accessible--especially online or through a librarian--are preferred. Items that are very hard to obtain are much less useful. We can assume that all users can read English, but we cannot assume they can read foreign languages.

Limited

The Further reading section may be expanded until it is substantial enough to provide broad bibliographic coverage of the subject. However, the section should be limited in size. Wikipedia is not a catalogue of all existing works, which in the case of a historical topic like World War II would run into thousands of items.

When the list needs to be trimmed, preference in retention should normally be given to notable works over non-notable works. (Depending on the medium of the work, see a specific notability guideline.)

Relation to reference sections

Further reading should not duplicate entries that are in the See also or External links sections. In short articles, it should not normally duplicate entries that are in any list of references in the article, such as is commonly used in conjunction with shortened footnotes. In long articles with many references, the most useful items can be duplicated in Further reading.

Further reading is not a list of general references. General references are sources actually used by editors to build the article content, but that are not presented as inline citations. By contrast, Further reading is primarily intended for publications that were not used by editors to build the current article content, but which editors still recommend.

Some editors list sources that they hope to use in the future to build the article in Further reading. This is neither encouraged nor prohibited. Many editors instead prefer to list such sources on the article's talk page, sometimes by using {{Refideas}}. Still, directly building the article with the source as a reference is strongly encouraged, rather than merely listing the source in Further reading.

Conflicts of interest

Please do not add a work to the Further reading section if you are an author or publisher of the work. All editors are expected to comply with the Conflicts of interest guideline. Bookspam (the addition of content for the purpose of advertising a work) and other promotional activities are prohibited.

Presentation

Use the same citation style that you've chosen for the references in the rest of the article. To maximize the readers' ease of finding these works, please provide full bibliographic citations, including ISBNs, ISSNs, WorldCat OCLC Numbers, and other identification numbers as appropriate. Do not include URLs to booksellers unless they provide free access to major parts of the book.

Present the items in a bulleted list. You may want to organize the items, either alphabetically, by date, or by some other criterion.

When an article lists a large number of sources or materials for Further reading, it may be helpful to add brief notes about the sources (e.g., beginner, advanced, detailed, survey, historically important, etc.), like this:

J. Smith, Introduction to Linear Programming, Acme Press, 2010. An introductory text.
D. Jones, Linear Programming Theory, Excelsior Press, 2008. A rigorous theoretical text for advanced readers.

Various formats may be used for these notes; they should be consistent within an article, but which format is used should depend on the nature and length of the annotations and the format of the reference.