Wikithesa Website

Among all the knowledge and libraries in the world, a huge body of knowledge is being lost every day. This refers to hundreds of millions of academic papers written worldwide every year in universities and colleges. Almost all of this knowledge, created through the integration of numerous global sources and various fields of study, goes to waste. Every day, millions of students work on seminar papers, term papers, and other assignments for undergraduate degrees, as well as research for advanced degrees. These works use innovative research, present ideas, and form part of the chain of academic inquiry. They are written in every language and in every field—social sciences and humanities, life sciences and exact sciences, medicine, arts, nutrition, and more. In the best case, only the lecturer or teaching assistant reads them—and not always even that. After grading, only a handful—mainly doctoral dissertations and some master's theses—are preserved and made public in various ways. The vast majority (over 99%) are discarded or simply forgotten and deleted from hard drives.

This is a massive knowledge resource, and as philosopher Francis Bacon said, "Knowledge is power." In his book Novum Organum, Instauratio Magna ("The New Organon – A Reorganization of Knowledge"), Bacon's idea was to systematically and scientifically organize human knowledge. Over the years, human knowledge has indeed been organized, and that organization has been refined. The arrival of computers and digitization further improved access to many fields of knowledge for the general population. Yet the knowledge generated and expanding daily continued to be forgotten and lost.

The Wikithesis repository aims to collect this knowledge into a multidisciplinary and multilingual database containing all types of academic works. Such a repository could also serve as a platform for collaboration across disciplines and countries, based on this shared resource, and later include academic tools such as a collaborative academic term dictionary, data analysis platforms, and more. The database will be able to present research models, subfields in various subjects, and link to relevant bibliographic databases.

This online repository, presented here for the first time, is open to all free of charge and could serve as a central source parallel to academic journal articles, providing accumulated and up-to-date academic knowledge. In addition, it will benefit not only students but also lecturers, graduates, intellectuals, autodidacts, researchers, high school students, and anyone interested in general or specific knowledge. The vision is that this repository, covering everything from small assignments and take-home exams to seminar papers, research projects, and postdoctoral work, could provide vast knowledge not found in well-known journal articles.

From the academic perspective, recommendations from lecturers exposed to the idea show full support. Since the database is free, both students and lecturers can check that no misuse is made of it, as with any other source. The existence of such a repository could enrich students' knowledge while also preventing plagiarism, greatly reducing the influence of websites that sell second-hand papers to students—often to buyers who do not even read what they purchase. In Israel and the United States, such sites include YouBank, Smarter, and others. These sites are a red flag to academia and lecturers, who sometimes feel powerless against them.

The idea of "Wikithesis" was among the top ten winners (ninth place out of 700) in the breakthrough ideas competition of Haaretz newspaper and the Radical – Ideas Lab association. Dr. Ofri Ilany, a member of the competition's editorial board, wrote about the idea: "I enjoyed reading your proposal and thought it was one of the simplest and most interesting ideas we received. This is a massive resource into which enormous efforts are invested by millions, yet it is wasted and almost unused."

In the first stage, the idea is launched on a computer platform, but as mentioned, in the future it will include innovations and the site will also appear as a smartphone application. I wish all contributors of works to the site and all visitors enjoyment and benefit from the resource. So, join us in preserving academic knowledge. Contribute your work and be part of the global repository.