Wikipedia:Learn, share, invent cycle

The learn, share, invent cycle is a model describing how researchers can incorporate Wikipedia editing into their existing professional workflow. It is composed of three basic steps:

1. Learn: The researcher does background research in an area, based on an immediate need such as a research idea in that area.
2. Share: The researcher creates new Wikipedia articles or fact-checks and expands existing articles to summarize what they have just learned about the area.
3. Invent: The researcher uses what they have learned to derive novel results.

After making some progression in the invent stage, the research may discover that more background research is needed, completing the cycle.

Benefits

This is only a small modification to the existing workflow in which researchers alternate between learn and invent. The new "share" stage provides numerous benefits:

• By explaining ideas in their own words, the researchers solidifies their understanding of the area and their ability to explain and teach it to others.
• By summarizing their background research for others, it makes it easier for students and researchers to get started in that research area in the future - Wikipedia is often the first place they come.
• The researcher can directly leverage their writing for use in background sections of publications, lecture notes, and books.
• The researcher forms connections within the Wikipedia community with other users interested in their area of research. Edits that others make to their work can point out conceptual misunderstandings and aid learning.
• Popular awareness and understanding of their research area is increased.

The learn, share, invent cycle is also an effective model for research-based classes where the final project is intended to be novel. In addition to the above benefits, the "share" stage in this setting allows the instructor to assess students' understanding and progress more effectively.

Example

Suppose a researcher has an idea for a new image compression algorithm. They begin by researching the state of the art in image compression, to determine if their idea has already been done, to borrow existing techniques that work in tandem with their idea, and to assess how effective competing techniques are. (Learn)

Next, they visit the Wikipedia article on image compression, read it and related subarticles, and see if it reflects what they have read. They may discover that the material is out-of-date, not mentioning the latest most effective techniques, or that it contains factual errors. They fix these errors and omissions. They may discover that a particularly influential algorithm has no article regarding it, and create one. (Share) They may also discover new information that merits further background research, causing them to iterate between Learn and Share.

Feeling now like they have a firm grasp on the state of the art, they go on to design, refine, and implement their new algorithm, perform empirical experiments comparing it to other methods, and submit a publication based on these results. Their publication contains a brief summary of the state of the art, adapted from their Wikipedia contributions. (Invent)

At this point, they have an idea for an improved, more efficient version of their algorithm using advanced data structures; they begin background research on these data structures, returning them to the Learn stage, and the cycle continues.

Later in their career, they teach a graduate class on signal compression, and borrow again from their Wikipedia contributions, now improved upon by others, for their lecture notes. These notes later serve as the basis for a new textbook.