can i use wikipedia for a research paper

How to Use Wikipedia in a Smart Way: *

What is wikipedia.

Wikipedia is a free, open and multilingual online encyclopedia written by voluntary and anonymous contributors from around the world. Yes, it is a free encyclopedia that anyone can edit . "Wiki" describes an easy-to-use website where users can do collaborative editing. Originally, wiki is a Hawaiian word for "quick,"  and was first used by developer  Ward Cunningham as computer terminology. Wikipedia was established by Jimmy Wales and Larry Sanger in 2001, and, up to present, it has become the largest and most popular Web-based reference source with 5,699,306 articles written in English.

What Wikipedia is not?

Wikipedia is not a primary source, nor a secondary source. It is a tertiary source built on the analysis of primary and secondary resources. Find more misconceptions about Wikipedia.

Who uses Wikipedia?

A group of researchers studied more than 500 articles on the subject of Wikipedia and their finding reveals that scholars, librarians and students are the most common users. They come to Wikipedia either for light-topic information or for serious topics concerning health and legal background.

How do I use Wikipedia properly?

If Wikipedia is used appropriately, it will help you to do the research. Do remember verify whatever you find in another source. Here are a few tips:

• Check the background information of a specific topic or the meaning of a term that doesn't sound familiar to you. For instance, who is Hubert Blaine Wolfeschlegelsteinhausenbergerdorff, Sr. ?
• Help become familiar with a research topic or serve as a starting point for a research to get a general impression. However, definitely you don't want to just stop there. Library has more resources to offer, which direct your thoughts fly high!
• Help narrow a broad research topic or help develop a research topic. You have to check the subheadings of the Wikipedia article or ask questions to a certain aspect of it. Check " Global Warming " in Wikipedia, do scientific discussions and popular opinion view global warming differently? And why?
• Help develop search terms that can be used in libraries' databases. Under " Global Warming ," you can find "greenhouse effect," "social aspect," "effects of global warming," and "permafrost," etc., which are very useful to narrow down a topic and used as good search terms in libraries' databases.
• Help find additional resources. At the end of Wikipedia articles, you will find a list of references (magazines, newspapers, journal article, and books, etc.) which direct you to outside resources that contributors consult. Check those works. Some are helpful and relevant to your research. However, some may surprise you and make you evaluate Wikipedia critically. --- The above ideas are adapted from "Using Wikipedia in Information Literacy Instruction" by Cate Calhoun

How can I evaluate Wikipedia articles?

To get the best judgment of Wikipedia articles, you have to know how Wikipedia works. To know how Wikipedia works, you have to create a Wikipedia article. To write a Wikipedia article, you may register an account and become a Wikipedian, or just simply let the computer use your IP address automatically. If you don't want to, no bother. Here are a few tips:

• Check the topic and its corresponding length . "The longer, the better" seems to work well in Wikipedia. At least it gives some indication of the maturity of the article.
• Check the first/introductory paragraph . Does that provide a good summary?
• Check the subheadings and see whether they are well-developed. Logical? Coherent?
• Read the article thoroughly . Does the article contain few errors? It is poorly-written or well-organized? If the article touches a controversial topic, does the tone sound neutral or biased?
• Check the references at the end . How many citations come from authoritative sources (journal articles and books)? Are the links active? Do the contributors cite resources accurately? 
• Check the talk page , which will present you the history of the particular article. When was the article created? How many contributors? Do they communicate with each other with grace? Do you see any sign of vandalism? Do you see any sign of "writing for profit?"
• Find the same topic in another resource , for instance, Encyclopedia Britannica, and compare them.

Cite Wikipedia articles or not?

Citing encyclopedia articles in assignments is usually not recommended, and this is even more true when it comes to Wikipedia. The reason is very simple: One should not completely depend on information provided by anonymous contributors, because you do not know if the person who wrote or edited the article are qualified in that subject area or has the right information/knowledge . The fact that "any one can edit" makes Wikipedia a socialpedia and a randompedia. When one begins working on a research paper, that means you are entering the scholarly world, where validity and trustworthiness are highly valued, based on modern conventional principles and practices that have been developed for hundreds of years.

What are Wikipedia featured articles?

Wikipedia featured articles   refer to those articles that are evaluated by editors as ones with best qualities, in terms of accuracy, neutrality, completeness, and style. There are 5,373 featured articles written in English language. If you intend to cite a featured article in your assigned paper, consultation with the professor is strongly recommended. 

Asst Prof/Head of Cataloging & Serials

Library Online Reference Resources

Even though Wikipedia can provide you with a starting point for your research, our library also offers you a number of scholarly reliable resources.

• Britannica Academic This link opens in a new window Delivers fast and easy access to trusted information with balanced, global perspectives and insights that users will not find anywhere else.
• Britannica Escolar This link opens in a new window This collection consist of leading knowledge-building resource that is universally trusted for accurate and age-appropriate content in Spanish
• Encyclopedia of Journalism This link opens in a new window The six-volume Encyclopedia of Journalism covers all significant dimensions of journalism, including print, broadcast, and Internet journalism; U.S. and international perspectives; history; technology; legal issues and court cases; ownership; and economics.
• Encyclopedia of Social Work This link opens in a new window This encyclopedia offer students, scholars, and practitioners a trusted foundation for a lifetime of work and research, with new articles and revisions to existing articles added regularly.
• Gale eBooks This link opens in a new window Gale Virtual Reference Library is a database of encyclopedias and specialized reference sources for multidisciplinary research. These reference materials once were accessible only in the library, but now you can access them online from the library or remotely 24/7.
• MedlinePlus Medical Encyclopedia This link opens in a new window
• Oxford English Dictionary This link opens in a new window
• Oxford Reference Online This link opens in a new window
• Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy This link opens in a new window

What is Scholarpedia?

The counterpart of Wikipedia as a popular source is Scholarpedia , which is an online free encyclopedia reviewed and maintained by scholarly experts in mathematics and sciences from around the world. This is a source with credit. Explore Scholarpedia and you will get an instant impression, which is quite different from Wikipedia. What makes it different is also one of the reasons why we recommend you resources that our library subscribed.

Further Readings

Here are a few articles that will help you gain a balanced view on Wikipedia

• Decline of Wikipedia
• Why you shouldn't use Wikipedia in your research
• Can you trust Wikipedia?
• A stand against Wikipedia
• Does Wikipedia have an accuracy problem?
• How today's college students use Wikipedia
• Wikipedia "Good Samaritans'' are on the money
• Wikipedia, a professor's best friend
• Wikipedia use: nothing to be ashamed about
• Last Updated: Jun 1, 2023 11:16 AM
• URL: https://libguides.york.cuny.edu/Wikipedia

Can I use Wikipedia in a college paper?

It depends how you use Wikipedia. Don't cite it in your paper, but it can help you discover independent sources for the facts and ideas that are summarized in Wikipedia.

A word of warning: your instructors may have strong opinions about Wikipedia, so check with them first! Your grade may be at stake.

Citing Wikipedia as a source is usually a bad idea.

Academic writing emphasizes sources that are close to the events or phenomena being discussed. This means using primary sources, such as original scientific research, actual laws, eyewitness testimony, etc., or sophisticated secondary sources, written by experts who have reviewed the primary sources.  Encyclopedias, such as Wikipedia, only  summarize  the findings of secondary sources. They are not close to the things being studied. Because of this, it is best to start with encyclopedias for helpful  overviews , but then to seek more original sources to base your paper on.

Furthermore, Wikipedia articles can be written or revised by anyone at any time . You can't know anything about the expertise, bias, or motivations of the many authors contributing to an article. Because of this, you can't evaluate its reliability. Finally, Wikipedia is at risk for the spread of biased information by anonymous authors. Academic writing is based on more foundational sources.

Wikipedia can help you find relevant external sources

One  important benefit of Wikipedia is that many articles cite the sources for their claims. These sources are separate from Wikipedia. Often you can link to these external sources and evaluate them yourself. If the source is good, then you can rely upon it for your paper. Don't cite Wikipedia, but let it point you to promising sources.

How to use Wikipedia's citations

• Citations are marked with superscript numbers. The citations come immediately after the borrowed material. You can "mouse over" the number for a quick citation, or you can click it to see the list of citations at the bottom. 
• Here is an statement from an (archived) Wikipedia article on dogs. 

Dogs generally show reduced fear and aggression compared with wolves. [61] [63]

To see the source of this statement, you would "mouse over" one of the superscripts: [61] or [63].

• The first note would give this article citation. The title link opens the full text.

Cagan, Alex; Blass, Torsten (2016).  "Identification of genomic variants putatively targeted by selection during dog domestication" .  BMC Evolutionary Biology .  16 : 10.  doi : 10.1186/s12862-015-0579-7 . 

• The second note would give this book citation:

Coppinger R, Schneider R: Evolution of working dogs. The domestic dog: Its evolution, behaviour and interactions with people. Cambridge: Cambridge University press, 1995.

These are both good sources for your paper. You could borrow from them directly and cite them.

Many citations include links to full text, but many do not. If you want to find the source, contact a librarian on  LibChat , or sometimes you can find an article by copying its citation into Google Scholar .

• citing sources
• scholarly vs. popular
• encyclopedias
• Last Updated Sep 15, 2022
• Answered By Joe Brewer

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LibChat is available 24/7! It is staffed by the PCC Library, but when we are not available, professionals we partner with from all over the world will help answer your questions.

To find more information about the services offered, visit our Library Services page

Follow the link to our current hours ., for professional development day, seattle central library will close early this wednesday. our open hours will be 8am-1pm, november 3rd., while we are closed for the holiday and college closure, from december 19-27, library staff will be spreading good cheer and will not be available by email nor phone. we will return on december 28th..

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Using Wikipedia for scholarly research

Tutorials: using wikipedia for scholarly research, an introduction to your library, the information timeline, generate great search terms, understand and use the reference collection, search the library catalog, research databases, what is a scholarly journal article, how to read a scholarly article, read and track down a citation, putting together your search terms, evaluating sources, broaden and narrow your search results, find multimedia items, using google scholar, evaluating web sites, library databases vs. google and the web, why citation is important, using noodletools, the information timeline and types of sources, get ready with reference, get ready with a book, research is a process, scholarship is a conversation, credibility is contextual, format matters, searching is strategic.

Your Seattle Central College librarians have created and collected tutorials to help students start research, find sources, use the web, and more.

Tutorials A-Z

• Credibility is Contextual
• Evaluating Sources
• Evaluating Web Sites
• Find Reference Sources Online
• Generate Great Search Terms
• How to Read a Scholarly Article
• Multimedia Items in the Library Catalog
• The Information Timeline
• Putting Together Your Search Terms
• Read and Track Down a Citation
• Research Databases
• Research is a Process
• Scholarship is a Conversation
• Search the Library Catalog
• Searching is Strategic
• A Short Introduction to Your Library
• Using Wikipedia for Scholarly Research
• What Is a Scholarly Journal Article?
• Why Citation Is Important

A Very Short Introduction to Your Library

All about the services and sources your library offers.

Vintage version: Seattle Central College library introduction video

Made just a few years ago, but my how the library has changed! The services are still the same, though, and you might enjoy the vintage feel of this library introduction!

Start your research

List of tutorials in this section.

Tutorials in this section will help you get started on yo ur research assignment . They include:

• The information timeline, or life cycle of information

Generate search terms

Information timeline worksheet.

• Information Timeline worksheet Students should complete and print this worksheet before their library workshop.

Information timeline transcript

• Information timeline video transcript A Word document containing the text of the information timeline video.

This tutorial, created by SCC librarians to help students prepare for library workshops, can also "stand alone." It will help students understand the information timeline and different types of sources. The worksheet in the box on the left can be used as an assessment.

Finding Search Terms worksheet

• Generate Search Terms worksheet

From the SCCC library! This tutorial will help students find and generate search terms, or keywords, so they can more easily search library tools such as the catalog and databases.

This video mentions using the library reference collection, including subject encyclopedias, for finding search terms. You can find a tutorial on finding and using these encyclopedias on the Understand the Use the Reference Collection  page. 

Find reference sources online

Watch this tutorial for help finding reference sources (background information) in the library's online databases.

Find sources

This section contain tutorials to help you find, select, and use sources for your research assignments.

• Search the library catalo g for books and ebooks
• Search the library catalog for multimedia items

Research databases: what are they and why are they useful?

And here are some tutorials will help you become a more effective searcher.

• Combine your search terms
• Broaden and narrow your search results
• Search the library catalog worksheet

This tutorial, created by SCC librarians, can be used to prepare for library workshop or as a standalone video to help students use the library catalog to find items in our collection.

This tutorial provides an excellent explanation of databases and why they're useful. It was created by the librarians at Yavapai College.

This is a great tutorial to help students understand what scholarly articles are, how they are written, and why they are important.

At the end of the tutorial, the "Ask Us" service for the library that created this video is shown. You can find the Seattle Central College Library's "Ask A Librarian" page at   https://libguides.seattlecentral.edu/library/ask . Students can use this page to contact a librarian with questions about research.

This is an short and clear tutorial to help students read scholarly articles.

If you want to know whether the Seattle Central College library has access to a specific article, this tutorial will show you how to find that information. This can be helpful for following the citations from other articles you've read during your research.

This tutorial will help students understand how to use keywords more effectively in search tools like the catalog and databases. It was created by librarians at Western University.

This tutorial is a great overview of CRAAP, a system for evaluating all types of sources. It was created by the library at Western University.

For information about research help at Central, you can visit our Ask a Librarian page at  https://libguides.seattlecentral.edu/library/ask .

Evaluating sources - additional information

This video provides a visual-only introduction to the CRAAP evaluation system. 

This tutorial is great for students with some familiarity with library databases and search techniques. It will help students search library databases more effectively.

Finding Multimedia Items in the Library Catalog

This video will help students use the library catalog to find DVDs and CDs about a research topic.

Use the web

This section contains tutorials to help you use the web more effectively and efficiently when completing research assignments.

• Use Google Scholar

Adding Seattle Central College Library links to Google Scholar

• Use Wikipedia for scholarly research
• Evaluate web sites
• Evaluating all types of sources
• Library databases compared to Google and the web

This tutorial from Utah State University Library explains how to use Google Scholar to find scholarly articles and books, and explore related sources.

The tutorial includes the example of "Full text at Utah State" links in the right-hand column of the search results. If you add Seattle Central College links to your search results, you will see the words "ViewIt@SeattleCentral" instead. See the instructions below the video to adding these links.

To add "ViewIt@SeattleCentral" links to your search results, follow these steps:

• From your search results page, click the three-bar "hamburger menu" in the top left corner.
• Select "Settings."
• On the settings page, click "Library links" in the menu on the left.
• Search for the words "Seattle Central College."
• Select the check-box next to "Seattle Central College - ViewIt@SeattleCentral."
• Click "Save."

This tutorial will help students understand how to use Wikipedia for starting academic research.

Evaluating web sources

This tutorial applies the CRAAP source evaluation methods to websites and includes examples.

The video ends with the recommendation to ask a librarian for help if you have any questions about this topic. You can find the Seattle Central College Library's Ask a Librarian page at  https://libguides.seattlecentral.edu/library/ask .

Evaluate all types of sources

This tutorial describes an additional method of evaluating websites. The first two minutes of the video also describe why evaluating websites is important. 

Cite sources

Tutorials in this section will help you cite sources and avoid plagiarism. They include:

Using NoodleTools to format your bibliography

This tutorial from the NCSU Libraries explains why citation is important for students for both student authors and those reading their work.

This tutorial gives the basics of features in NoodleTools, including creating bibliographies and works cited pages.

This video, which was created by another library, begins with the selection of NoodleTools on the library website. To find the Seattle Central College NoodleTools link, click on "Cite" on the left side of the library homepage . From the Cite page , select the "NoodleTools" link. 

Get Ready! tutorials

Tutorials in this section can be used to pr epare students for library workshops . Each includes a worksheet that students should prepare and print before they come to the workshop. They include:

• The information timeline and types of sources
• Get ready with reference materials
• Get ready with a book
• Information Timeline worksheet This worksheet can be used before library workshops.

This tutorial, created by SCC librarians to help students prepare for library workshops, can also "stand alone." It will help students understand the information timeline and different types of sources.

• Get Ready with Reference worksheet
• Library of Congress Classification System

Get Ready with Reference Video

This video demonstrates how to use the library's online resources to find reference material to begin research.

Get Ready with a Book worksheet

• Get Ready with a Book worksheet Complete and print this worksheet before your library workshop.

Information LIteracy Concepts

Tutorials in this section will help you understand the academic research process .

•         Research is a process: Research is iterative and depends on asking increasingly complex questions. •         Scholarship is a conversation: Ongoing communication occurs within a community of scholars resulting in new insights, discoveries and perspectives. •         Credibility is contextual: Credibility depends on many factors including the author, audience and purpose. •         Format matters : When evaluating your resources, examine the format. The way a document is presented indicates its strengths and weaknesses. •         Searching is strategic: Doing academic research is hard, but there are some ways to make your searching more efficient and productive.

This tutorial will help students  understand that research is iterative and depends on asking increasingly complex questions.

This tutorial will help students examine format when evaluating their resources. It will explain how the way a document is presented, indicates its strengths and weaknesses.

This tutorial will offer students some ways to make their searching more efficient and productive.

• Last Updated: Nov 29, 2022 1:46 PM
• URL: https://libguides.seattlecentral.edu/tutorials

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The average American uses an astounding 141 rolls of toilet paper a year . If you’re going through that much tissue, we think it’s worth settling on a brand you actively like (you could also consider cutting back, with the help of a bidet ). Over the course of 10 months, we tushy-tested 36 varieties of toilet paper. And we concluded that Unilever’s Seventh Generation 100% Recycled Extra Soft & Strong Bath Tissue and Procter & Gamble’s Charmin Ultra Strong are the most likely to please the most people. Amazon’s Presto! Ultra-Soft Toilet Paper , our budget pick, is great for folks looking for soft-enough toilet paper that costs less.

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Many toilet papers leave crumbles and dust on bottoms and bathroom floors—yuck.

Toilet paper that maintains its composition during wiping is critical: No one likes rips.

If a toilet paper brand is hard to find, it doesn’t matter if it’s great.

Seventh Generation 100% Recycled Extra Soft & Strong Bath Tissue is made with 100% recycled materials, but you’d never know it by the look and feel of this soft, sturdy, and lint-free toilet paper. Its price is on a par with that of traditional papers, and it was unanimously liked by testers.

Charmin Ultra Strong is a strong, low-lint, readily available toilet paper that’s slightly plusher than the Seventh Generation paper. But the Charmin paper is usually more expensive than our Seventh Generation pick, and it’s not made from sustainable or recycled materials. Of the traditional toilet papers we tested, this one was judged to be the most durable and comfortable to use.

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Why you should trust us, how we picked and tested, what is sustainable toilet paper, what about bamboo toilet paper, our pick: seventh generation 100% recycled extra soft & strong bath tissue, flaws but not dealbreakers, our pick: charmin ultra strong, budget pick: amazon’s presto ultra-soft toilet paper, what to look forward to, other good toilet papers, what about bidets, what about “flushable” wipes, the competition.

Wirecutter has been testing toilet paper for nearly a decade. Combined, the previous author of this guide (Kevin Purdy) and I (Nancy Redd) have spent more than 50 hours reading about and researching the paper-manufacturing industry, paper recycling, toilet paper sustainability, and how paper products are produced—and dissolved.

In 2021 and early 2022, I personally compared 36 toilet papers at home, also taking into account feedback from my husband and two kids. After I narrowed the field considerably, I recruited nine additional Wirecutter staffers and their family members. Some of them compared top sustainable brands side by side; others compared only the top-two sustainable options with favorite traditional toilet papers. All testers ranked toilet papers in terms of softness, strength, and lint levels.

I also interviewed two industry experts: Shelley Vinyard , from the Natural Resources Defense Council, a not-for-profit environmental group, and Chris McLaren , chief marketing officer at the US Forest Stewardship Council.

As Wirecutter’s senior staff writer for health, I’m not new to bathroom-related comparison testing, having written guides to tampons , toilet stools , period underwear , and portable pee funnels .

We’ve been recommending toilet papers for nearly a decade. But after the great toilet paper shortage of 2020 —and with more consumer interest and tremendous strides in the number and quality of sustainable toilet papers available—we decided to give this guide a complete overhaul. Beginning in summer 2021, we called in 36 types of toilet paper from all of the major manufacturers. These included our three existing picks (from Charmin and Cottonelle), several smaller brands, and store-brand (generic) options.

Eleven of the 36 toilet papers we tried were made from what the toilet paper industry calls “ sustainable materials ,” like recycled paper. The rest were traditional toilet papers, made from trees cut down specifically to be ground into pulp for making toilet paper. We did test some three-ply toilet papers and one-ply toilet papers. But most of the papers we tested—and all of our eventual picks—were two-ply (two thin layers of paper lightly pressed or glued together).

Our initial testing examined various factors for each entrant:

Comfort: We judged softness subjectively during wiping. Our blind tushy testing had initial testers (my family members and me) rating all 36 toilet papers on a scale of 1 (those that felt like sandpaper or looked transparent like facial tissue) to 10 (opaque toilet papers that felt obscenely plush).

Lint factor: I wiped the sheets on velvet to test how much lint or dust was left behind, dismissing toilet papers that shed large amounts of residue.

Sturdiness: I poked and pulled sheets in multiple directions and with varying levels of pressure to test strength and “rippiness,” noting the ones that held up.

Once the testing pool was whittled down considerably, I sent rolls to nine additional staffers, who judged each toilet paper without knowledge of which had performed best in the first round of testing. Several testers were sent the papers sans packaging, so they were unaware of the brand or whether a roll was made from recycled paper, bamboo, or traditional trees. The staffers (and, in some cases, their families) ranked the contenders in terms of softness, lintiness, and strength. After those results came in, I also considered secondary factors, including:

• Certification: Toilet papers that bear a certification label from the Forest Stewardship Council (FSC) have been evaluated by the organization and found to be manufactured with responsibly sourced fibers. Though there are other certifications available, such as from the Swiss Programme for the Endorsement of Forest Certification (PEFC, which certifies our budget pick), FSC is considered by environmental leaders (such as the World Wildlife Fund ) to have the most rigorous universal standards. Although we didn’t consider FSC certification to be a requirement, we did weigh papers with FSC certification more favorably.
• Additives: Most toilet papers have “proprietary” formulas of chemicals and conditioners that companies typically won’t disclose. We asked the manufacturers of our top picks whether their toilet paper contained any animal ingredients or byproducts (because some do), and we also asked about what they use to purify and whiten their toilet papers. In 1998, the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) began requiring most paper mills to limit elemental chlorine from being used in toilet paper production, due to carcinogenic concerns. Today almost all toilet papers are still purified and whitened using chlorine-based disinfectants and other undisclosed chemicals. Our Seventh Generation pick’s manufacturing process is completely free of chlorine. But its toilet paper is made from recycled papers that may have once been bleached, so it can’t be considered totally chlorine-free (which is most ideal ). The use of additives did not make or break our toilet paper picks, but they did inform our evaluation.
• Availability: I searched stores (online and in person) regularly to check fluctuations in price and availability, noting whether brands were frequently out of stock.

Until our March 2022 update, we recommended only toilet papers made from virgin wood pulp—also referred to as “traditional” toilet paper—because none of the environmentally friendlier toilet papers we’d tested came close in softness and strength. Since our original testing for this guide began, nearly a decade ago, there have been tremendous strides in the area of “sustainable” toilet paper. Sustainable toilet paper is made from either recycled fibers or from more environmentally friendly primary sources, such as responsibly sourced bamboo. We found several of the sustainable toilet papers we tested in 2021 and 2022 to be comparable in comfort and strength to traditional toilet papers, as well as comparatively much less dusty.

With growing concerns about climate change and deforestation , there is an increasing push to eliminate the “tree to toilet pipeline,” which is the cutting down of forests full of trees just to make toilet paper, said Shelley Vinyard, co-author of the Natural Resources Defense Council’s The Issue With Tissue (PDF) report. Since 2019, the NRDC —a not-for-profit environmental group—has evaluated dozens of toilet papers and ranked them, taking into consideration factors such as whether potentially carcinogenic chlorine is used to purify or whiten the fibers and the type of certifications held by the fiber suppliers to demonstrate their commitment to responsible sourcing. The latest report ranked toilet paper made from recycled fibers higher than toilet paper made from other sustainable materials, such as bamboo. “What we want most is circular solutions to avoid sending waste to the landfill, so, with toilet paper, that means post-consumer recycled content is the gold standard,” Vinyard said.

Chris McLaren, chief marketing officer at the US Forest Stewardship Council, agreed with Vinyard’s assessment, with the caveat that it’s not always possible to incorporate circular solutions because there isn’t as much used paper to recycle as there once was. “The digitalization of society (such as online media instead of newspapers and magazines) has caused there to be fewer recycled papers to utilize in the making of sustainable paper products,” he explained. McLaren said this issue of sustainability goes far beyond toilet paper, and that without enough recycled paper to use, some toilet paper will always need to come from new materials “to keep up with demand.” FSC certification is one way to ensure that, as McLaren put it, “forests are well-managed to stay healthy."

The toilet paper you decide to use is obviously a personal choice. Seventh Generation’s 100% Recycled Extra Soft & Strong is FSC-certified to be made from 100% recycled materials. Charmin Ultra Strong has a lesser type of FSC certification that guarantees at least 70% of materials are from FSC-approved forests; the other 30% of materials are considered acceptable but are not FSC-certified. Amazon Presto! Ultra-Soft is not FSC-certified, but it is PEFC -certified (an industry certification considered to have less-rigorous standards than those of FSC). As of February 2022, the PEFC certification does not appear anywhere on Presto! Ultra-Soft’s new packaging, though an Amazon spokesperson confirmed it was PEFC-certified.

Bamboo has become an increasingly popular alternative source material for toilet paper, and we tested several bamboo brands for this guide, including Betterway , Who Gives A Crap , and No. 2. Toilet paper made from bamboo is often promoted as an eco-friendly solution since bamboo grows so quickly and can be easily replenished, unlike a boreal forest . But bamboo toilet paper isn’t necessarily better for the environment, and it’s generally more expensive and not as soft as other papers.

When bamboo toilet paper is FSC-certified to be sourced responsibly—that is, ecosystems aren’t being wiped out and forests aren’t being clear-cut to plant homogenous swaths of bamboo—it is a great alternative option, McLaren and Vinyard both said. But few bamboo toilet paper companies have pursued certification. Two exceptions are Betterway and Cloud Paper , which are both FSC-certified to source 100% of their bamboo from suppliers committed to responsibly managing their crops and surrounding environments.

Seventh Generation 100% Recycled Extra Soft & Strong Bath Tissue is the cubic zirconia of toilet paper: With close scrutiny, an astute toilet-paper user might notice something’s different. But we think the average person would be hard-pressed to guess that this one is formulated with 100% recycled paper, instead of traditional virgin tree pulp. This soft, supple, nearly lint-free toilet paper is manufactured without bleach or any animal byproducts. And it was a true diamond in the rough among our testing pool of 11 environmentally friendly toilet papers.

Although we found many of the sustainable bath tissues we tested to be scratchy, Seventh Generation’s toilet paper is not. It also held its own against traditional toilet papers in softness and strength—testers found it to be durable and dependable, with no reports of accidental ripping during use. During the velvet rub tests to check for crumbling, pilling, and lint, the paper remained intact and left behind almost no residue.

Like traditional toilet paper (but unlike many of its sustainable competitors), Seventh Generation’s Extra Soft & Strong toilet paper is white in color. Yet this is due only to the color of the recycled papers used to make it; there is no chlorine used in the manufacturing process. This toilet paper is two-ply, and both sides are soft, but only one side features an embossed pattern (which is meant to help with wiping, though its usefulness is debatable). Seventh Generation says this paper is safe for septic systems and low-flush-volume toilets, and that no animal ingredients or byproducts are used in the manufacturing process.

Seventh Generation toilet paper is readily available in stores and online. Its largest offering, a 24-pack (240 sheets per roll), is normally about $22, or 0.38¢ ($0.0038) per sheet. Since it’s often on sale for less, Seventh Generation toilet paper is one of the most economical of the sustainable papers, and it’s similar (or even cheaper) in price to many traditional toilet papers.

Princess and the Pee types may notice that Seventh Generation is slightly less soft and a tad less strong than Charmin, our traditional toilet paper pick. However, one of our testers of sustainable toilet paper didn’t even realize that it was a recycled option, mistaking the Seventh Generation paper as a “control” traditional roll.

Price: about 0.38¢ ($0.0038) per sheet (depending on pack size and store sales)

Options: four, 12, or 24 rolls (240 sheets per roll)

Manufactured in: USA and Canada

FSC certification: Yes, certified to be 100% recycled.

Chlorine used in processing: No. Only hydrogen peroxide is used for the purification process. However, the recycled office paper and newspaper used may have been initially processed with chlorine, so the toilet paper cannot be called totally chlorine-free.

Ingredients: recycled paper fibers, hydrogen peroxide, “proprietary ingredients to control microbial growth and to aid in the wet strength of the product,” according to a Seventh Generation spokesperson (the company says this paper contains no animal ingredients or byproducts)

Of the 36 toilet papers we tested, the supple Charmin Ultra Strong stood out as the one with the best combination of strength and softness, with the added bonus of being low-lint and crumble-free. As bathroom tissue goes, our testers found this one to be foolproof—it tackled the toughest of toilet trips with nary a breakthrough finger rip, but it also felt pampering on our most delicate body parts. Our velvet rub tests found that Charmin Ultra Strong left behind very little lint, with no pilling or crumbling.

Charmin Ultra Strong is two-ply, and though only one side features an embossed pattern (like the Seventh Generation toilet paper), our testers confirmed that both sides felt super-soft. A Charmin spokesperson told us that it’s safe for septic systems and low-flush-volume toilets.

This toilet paper is available almost everywhere bathroom tissue is sold, in-store and online, and it has rarely been out of stock.

This traditional toilet paper is formulated from virgin tree pulp, but it is FSC-certified to have the majority of its materials sourced responsibly. It is manufactured using a purification/whitening process that is elemental chlorine-free but not totally chlorine-free.

When not on sale, Charmin Ultra Strong is slightly more expensive per sheet than Seventh Generation’s paper. The largest pack you can buy is a Mega roll 30-pack (264 sheets per roll) for about $31.50, or 0.39¢ ($0.0039) per sheet. That’s more than our other picks cost, but this paper is often on sale, and manufacturer coupons abound.

Charmin could not confirm whether animal ingredients or byproducts are used in the manufacturing process.

Price: about 0.39¢ ($0.0039) per sheet (depending on pack size and store sales)

Options: six, 12, 18, 24, or 30 Mega rolls (264 sheets per roll); eight, 12, or 18 Super Mega rolls (396 sheets per roll)

Manufactured in: USA

FSC certification: Yes, certified to be FSC-Mix, meaning at least 70% of the tree fibers used are responsibly sourced.

Chlorine used in processing: Yes. The purification/whitening process is elemental chlorine-free, but not totally chlorine-free.

Ingredients: wood pulp, water-based adhesive, and proprietary conditioners (a spokesperson for Charmin said it may contain animal ingredients or byproducts)

Although it isn’t quite as soft as our top picks from Seventh Generation and Charmin , Amazon’s Presto! Ultra-Soft Toilet Paper is a reliable traditional toilet paper that’s comfortable to use. However, it comes only in a large box of 24 rolls (four packages of six), so this may not work well for people with very limited storage space. At around 0.31¢ ($0.0031) per sheet, Presto! paper costs at least 25% less than our top picks—and using Amazon’s Subscribe & Save service could bring the price down by an additional 5% to 15%.

In our velvet rub test, we found Amazon Presto! left behind more lint than our other picks—but not too much. It also did not pill or rip easily while wiping. Most testers noticed only that it was less soft than our other picks, when they were asked to compare them side by side. The Amazon paper is two-ply, and both sides are soft (though, as with our other picks, only one side features the embossed pattern). Amazon says this tissue is safe for septic systems and low-flow toilets.

Amazon! Presto is rarely out of stock, but you can purchase it only online (on Amazon, of course). And it can be purchased only in a set of 24 Mega rolls (308 sheets per roll). This is a traditional toilet paper that is formulated from virgin tree pulp, and it is not FSC-certified. The pulp used to make the toilet paper is purified/whitened through a process that utilizes chlorine dioxide, making it elemental chlorine-free but not totally chlorine-free. Amazon confirmed that no animal ingredients or byproducts are used in the manufacturing process.

Price: about 0.31¢ ($0.0031) per sheet (less if you use Amazon’s Subscribe & Save service)

Options: Amazon’s Presto! Ultra-Soft comes in only one size: 24 Mega rolls (308 sheets per roll)

FSC certification: No, though it is certified by the Programme for the Endorsement of Forest Certification (PEFC).

Chlorine used in processing: Yes. The purification/whitening process uses chlorine dioxide and thus is elemental chlorine-free, but it is not totally chlorine-free.

Ingredients: wood pulp and proprietary process chemicals “to help deliver properties like wet strength to the product,” according to an Amazon spokesperson (a spokesperson for Amazon said it contained no animal ingredients or byproducts)

We’re currently testing the premium version of celebrity-backed Cloud Paper, a well-liked, if slightly expensive, 100% FSC-certified bamboo toilet paper bleached using a TCF (totally chlorine free) method.

If you’re looking for a budget toilet paper and prefer to shop in-store: Walmart’s Great Value Ultra Strong and Target’s Up & Up Premium Ultra Soft are both extremely similar to our budget pick, Amazon’s Presto! Ultra-Soft . In fact, until late 2021, all three products had the same manufacturer license from the Sustainable Forestry Initiative on their packaging, as did other toilet paper made by white-label company First Quality Enterprises Inc. Although Presto! Ultra-Soft changed its packaging to omit this license number, the new packaging links to www.prestopaperpatents.com , which discusses First Quality Tissue at length. If you find either of these on sale, they’re both a good inexpensive option. But we found that Amazon’s Presto! Ultra-Soft was generally less expensive.

If you want a super-soft toilet paper and don’t mind a little butt dandruff: Cottonelle Ultra ComfortCare (our previous top pick) and the brand’s Ultra GentleCare (an aloe-infused cult favorite) are the softest toilet papers we’ve tested. However, they are also the dustiest and lintiest of all the papers we’ve tested, shedding tiny little lint bits and other residue everywhere the toilet paper touches, from bathroom cabinets to human bottoms. These are still super-comfy, super-cushy, and super-sturdy choices if you’re okay with tp residue.

If you’d prefer a toilet paper made of bamboo: Testers liked Betterway , which is soft (for bamboo toilet paper) and FSC-certified to have 100% of its fibers sourced responsibly (the best of the certifications available to bamboo papers). It comes at a higher cost than our picks, however, and it feels a lot rougher.

As an alternative to toilet paper, or as a means to reduce the amount of toilet paper you use, consider the bidet . A bidet is, essentially, a powerful water fountain in your toilet that’s meant to spray your bottom clean, hands-free, with only a square or two of toilet paper needed to dry off. (Some bidets even incorporate a bum-drying fan, potentially cutting out the need for toilet paper altogether.) Bidets have been a bathroom-hygiene staple in many parts of the world, such as Japan and Italy, for decades, and they’re gaining popularity in the US. Wirecutter testers have found bidets to be life-changing devices that can be more economical in the long run and cut your toilet paper needs by at least half. “We’re not saying people should throw out their toilet paper,” Shelley Vinyard said. “But bidets take much less water to use than the water required to make a roll of toilet paper, and they save money.”

Don’t buy wipes, unless you’re willing to put used wipes in your bathroom trash can or maintain a separate can for them. By flushing them down your toilet, you’re passing on a huge problem to your sewer system, as evidenced by sewer crises in New York City and London , and recurring problems in Miami , Ottawa , and Lake Charles, Louisiana , among other cities. For those who think they need to use wipes, we suggest they consider a bidet instead.

Sustainable toilet paper

Bamboo No. 2 Toilet Paper rolls come individually wrapped in colorful, Instagram-worthy tissue, and the packaging doesn’t use any plastic. But this toilet paper is not FSC-certified, and it’s also not as soft as our sustainable pick .

​​ Who Gives A Crap Premium Bamboo Toilet Paper also comes individually wrapped in pretty, plastic-free packaging. But it’s not as soft as our sustainable pick, nor is it FSC-certified.

Caboo Bamboo Bath Tissue was polarizing. Some testers thought it was perfectly serviceable, but others found it to be rough and not strong enough.

Tushy’s bamboo toilet paper also comes individually wrapped in pretty, plastic-free packaging, but it is very thin and scratchy.

Reel Tree-Free bamboo toilet paper feels rough compared to other bamboo toilet papers we tried.

PlantPaper bamboo toilet paper is FSC-certified, but it’s also rough and thin, and it ripped too easily.

Who Gives A Crap 100% Recycled Toilet Paper is extremely popular among sustainability-minded butt wipers, and it comes individually wrapped in attractive, plastic-free packaging. But it felt rough to us.

Neither Whole Foods’ 365 Sustainably Soft recycled toilet paper nor its 100% recycled toilet paper felt as strong or as comfortable to use as our picks.

A spokesperson from Seventh Generation told us its Natural Unbleached Bathroom Tissue (also made from recycled paper) had been discontinued.

Traditional toilet paper

Aria Premium Earth Friendly Bath Tissue scored very high in comfort among test tushies, but it’s expensive and dusty.

Neither Amazon’s Presto! Ultra-Strong nor its thicker three-ply option were worth the additional expense over our budget pick , the same brand’s Ultra-Soft.

Costco’s Kirkland Signature was the widest toilet paper in our test pool (the rolls often don’t fit on regular holders). But that was the most impressive feature of this otherwise-mediocre paper. It was neither the softest nor the strongest in our testing pool, and it was rather dusty. This was surprising given the longstanding reputation of this toilet paper; diehard Costco toilet paper users on Reddit theorize that pandemic-related supply-chain issues have caused the company’s bath tissues to devolve.

Charmin Essentials Strong and Charmin Essentials Soft felt scratchy and seemed to require a lot more paper to finish the task than our picks.

When directly compared with our top picks, Charmin Ultra Soft , Quilted Northern Ultra Soft & Strong , and Quilted Northern Ultra Plush were not ultra-soft, ultra-plush, or ultra-anything to our testers.

Charmin Ultra Gentle and Scott ComfortPlus were linty and ripped too easily.

Scott 1000 was translucent and easily ripped.

Great Value’s Soft & Strong , Walmart’s Cascades , Cottonelle Ultra CleanCare , Virtue , and  Angel Soft were not as soft or sturdy as our picks.

Amazon Solimo , Kirkland Signature Ultra Soft , Scott Extra Soft , Scott Naturals Tube-Free, and White Cloud Ultra Strong & Soft were tested (and dismissed) in an earlier round of testing. They have since been discontinued.

—additional reporting by Kevin Purdy

This guide was edited by Ellen Lee and Kalee Thompson.

Emily Flitter, My Tireless Quest for a Tubeless Wipe , The New York Times , February 28, 2020

Olivia Young, Eco-Friendly Toilet Paper: Bamboo vs. Recycled , Treehugger.com , December 6, 2021

Shelley Vinyard, co-author of The Issue With Tissue report (PDF) , phone interview , December 1, 2021

Chris McLaren, chief marketing officer at the US Forest Stewardship Council , phone interview , February 9, 2022

Meet your guide

Nancy Redd is a senior staff writer covering health and grooming at Wirecutter. She is a GLAAD Award–nominated on-air host and a New York Times best-selling author. Her latest nonfiction book, The Real Body Manual , is a visual health and wellness guide for young adults of all genders. Her other books include Bedtime Bonnet and Pregnancy, OMG!

Further reading

There’s a Toilet Paper Calculator That Cuts Through ‘Mega’ and ‘Jumbo’ Marketing Claims

by Elissa Sanci

Frustrated by confusing toilet paper marketing language, these amateur deal finders created a calculator to help sort the deals from the duds.

The Best Toilet Seat Risers

by Anna Wenner

If you or a loved one find it hard to stand up after using the toilet, it may be time to add one of these toilet seat risers to the bathroom.

Out of Toilet Paper? You Have Other Options. Just Don’t Flush Them!

by Doug Mahoney

Here’s how to handle TP scarcity without ruining your local water treatment systems.

Are Bidets Better for You Than Toilet Paper?

by Shannon Palus

Bidets are often marketed for their so-called medical benefits. They’ll clean your butt, sure. Can they—and should they—really do any more than that?

To revisit this article, visit My Profile, then View saved stories .

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ChatGPT Is Making Universities Rethink Plagiarism

In late December of his sophomore year, Rutgers University student Kai Cobbs came to a conclusion he never thought possible:  Artificial intelligence might just be dumber than humans. 

After listening to his peers rave about the generative AI tool  ChatGPT , Cobbs decided to toy around with the chatbot while writing an essay on the history of capitalism. Best known for its ability to generate long-form written content in response to user input prompts, Cobbs expected the tool to produce a nuanced and thoughtful response to his specific research directions. Instead, his screen produced a generic, poorly written paper he’d never dare to claim as his own. 

“The quality of writing was appalling. The phrasing was awkward and it lacked complexity,” Cobbs says. “I just logically can’t imagine a student using writing that was generated through ChatGPT for a paper or anything when the content is just plain bad.” 

Not everyone shares Cobbs’ disdain. Ever since OpenAI launched the chatbot in November,  educators have been struggling with how to handle a new wave of student work produced with the help of artificial intelligence. While some public school systems, like New York City’s, have banned the use of ChatGPT on school devices and networks to curb cheating, universities have been reluctant to follow suit. In higher education, the introduction of generative AI has raised thorny questions about the definition of plagiarism and academic integrity on campuses where new digital research tools come into play all the time. 

Make no mistake, the birth of ChatGPT does not mark the emergence of concerns relating to the improper use of the internet in academia. When  Wikipedia launched in 2001 , universities nationwide were  scrambling to decipher their own research philosophies and understandings of honest academic work, expanding policy boundaries to match pace with technological innovation. Now, the stakes are a little more complex, as schools figure out how to treat bot-produced work rather than weird attributional logistics. The world of higher education is playing a familiar game of catch-up, adjusting their rules, expectations, and perceptions as other professions adjust, too. The only difference now is that the internet can think for itself. 

According to ChatGPT, the definition of plagiarism is the act of using someone else’s work or ideas without giving proper credit to the original author. But when the work is generated by some thing rather than some one , this definition is tricky to apply. As Emily Hipchen, a board member of Brown University’s Academic Code Committee, puts it, the use of generative AI by students leads to a critical point of contention. “If [plagiarism] is stealing from a person,” she says, “then I don’t know that we have a person who is being stolen from.”

Hipchen is not alone in her speculation. Alice Dailey, chair of the Academic Integrity Program at Villanova University, is also grappling with the idea of classifying an algorithm as a person, specifically if the algorithm involves text generation.

By Matt Burgess

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By Joseph Cox

By Boone Ashworth

Dailey believes that eventually professors and students are going to need to understand that digital tools that generate text, rather than just collect facts, are going to need to fall under the umbrella of things that can be plagiarized from. 

Although Dailey acknowledges that this technological growth incites new concerns in the world of academia, she doesn’t find it to be a realm entirely unexplored. “I think we’ve been in a version of this territory for a while already,” Dailey says. “Students who commit plagiarism often borrow material from a ‘somewhere’—a website, for example, that doesn’t have clear authorial attribution. I suspect the definition of plagiarism will expand to include things that produce.” 

Eventually, Dailey believes, a student who uses text from ChatGPT will be seen as no different than one that copies and pastes chunks of text from Wikipedia without attribution. 

Students’ views on ChatGPT are another issue entirely. There are those, like Cobbs, who can’t imagine putting their name on anything bot-generated, but there are others who see it as just another tool, like spellcheck or even a calculator. For Brown University sophomore Jacob Gelman, ChatGPT exists merely as a convenient research assistant and nothing more.

“Calling the use of ChatGPT to pull reliable sources from the internet ‘cheating’ is absurd. It’s like saying using the internet to conduct research is unethical,” Gelman says. “To me, ChatGPT is the research equivalent of [typing assistant] Grammarly. I use it out of practicality and that’s really all.” Cobbs expressed similar sentiment, comparing the AI bot to “an online encyclopedia.”

But while students like Gelman use the bot to speed up research, others take advantage of the high-capacity prompt input feature to generate completed works for submission. It might seem obvious what qualifies as cheating here, but different schools across the country offer contrasting takes.

According to Carlee Warfield, chair of Bryn Mawr College’s Student Honor Board, the school considers any use of these AI platforms as plagiarism. The tool’s popularization just calls for greater focus in evaluating the intent behind students’ violations. Warfield explains that students who turn in essays entirely produced by AI are categorically different from those who borrow from online tools without knowledge of standard citations. Because the ChatGPT phenomenon is still new, students’ confusion surrounding the ethics is understandable. And it's unclear what policies will remain in place once the dust settles—at any school.

In the midst of fundamental change in both the academic and technological spheres, universities are forced to reconsider their definitions of academic integrity to reasonably reflect the circumstances of society. The only problem is, society shows no stagnance. 

“Villanova’s current academic integrity code will be updated to include language that prohibits the use of these tools to generate text that then students represent as text they generated independently,” Dailey explained. “But I think it’s an evolving thing. And what it can do and what we will then need in order to keep an eye on will also be kind of a moving target.”

In addition to increasingly complex questions about whether ChatGPT is a research tool or a plagiarism engine, there’s also the possibility that it can be  used for learning. In other educational settings, teachers see it as a way to show students the shortcomings of AI. Some instructors are already  modifying how they teach by giving students assignments bots couldn’t complete, like those that require personal details or anecdotes. There’s also the matter of detecting AI use in students’ work, which is a  burgeoning cottage industry all its own. 

Ultimately, Dailey says, schools may need rules that reflect a range of variables.

“My guess is that there will be the development of some broad blanket policies that essentially say, unless you have permission from a professor to use AI tools, using them will be considered a violation of the academic integrity code,” Dailey says. “That then gives faculty broad latitude to use it in their teaching or in their assignments, as long as they are stipulating explicitly that they are allowing it.”

As for ChatGTP, the program agrees. “Advances in fields such as artificial intelligence are expected to drive significant innovation in the coming years,” it says, when asked how schools can combat academic dishonesty. “Schools should constantly review and update their academic honor codes as technology evolves to ensure they are addressing the current ways in which technology is being used in academic settings.”

But, a bot would say that. 

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Title: gpt-4 technical report.

Abstract: We report the development of GPT-4, a large-scale, multimodal model which can accept image and text inputs and produce text outputs. While less capable than humans in many real-world scenarios, GPT-4 exhibits human-level performance on various professional and academic benchmarks, including passing a simulated bar exam with a score around the top 10% of test takers. GPT-4 is a Transformer-based model pre-trained to predict the next token in a document. The post-training alignment process results in improved performance on measures of factuality and adherence to desired behavior. A core component of this project was developing infrastructure and optimization methods that behave predictably across a wide range of scales. This allowed us to accurately predict some aspects of GPT-4's performance based on models trained with no more than 1/1,000th the compute of GPT-4.

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What Is Big Data?

Sherry Tiao | Senior Manager, AI & Analytics, Oracle | March 11, 2024

In This Article

Big Data Defined

The three “vs” of big data, the value—and truth—of big data, the history of big data, big data use cases, big data challenges, how big data works, big data best practices.

What exactly is big data?

The definition of big data is data that contains greater variety, arriving in increasing volumes and with more velocity. This is also known as the three “Vs.”

Put simply, big data is larger, more complex data sets, especially from new data sources. These data sets are so voluminous that traditional data processing software just can’t manage them. But these massive volumes of data can be used to address business problems you wouldn’t have been able to tackle before.

Two more Vs have emerged over the past few years: value and veracity . Data has intrinsic value. But it’s of no use until that value is discovered. Equally important: How truthful is your data—and how much can you rely on it?

Today, big data has become capital. Think of some of the world’s biggest tech companies. A large part of the value they offer comes from their data, which they’re constantly analyzing to produce more efficiency and develop new products.

Recent technological breakthroughs have exponentially reduced the cost of data storage and compute, making it easier and less expensive to store more data than ever before. With an increased volume of big data now cheaper and more accessible, you can make more accurate and precise business decisions.

Finding value in big data isn’t only about analyzing it (which is a whole other benefit). It’s an entire discovery process that requires insightful analysts, business users, and executives who ask the right questions, recognize patterns, make informed assumptions, and predict behavior.

But how did we get here?

Although the concept of big data itself is relatively new, the origins of large data sets go back to the 1960s and ‘70s when the world of data was just getting started with the first data centers and the development of the relational database.

Around 2005, people began to realize just how much data users generated through Facebook, YouTube, and other online services. Hadoop (an open source framework created specifically to store and analyze big data sets) was developed that same year. NoSQL also began to gain popularity during this time.

The development of open source frameworks, such as Hadoop (and more recently, Spark) was essential for the growth of big data because they make big data easier to work with and cheaper to store. In the years since then, the volume of big data has skyrocketed. Users are still generating huge amounts of data—but it’s not just humans who are doing it.

With the advent of the Internet of Things (IoT), more objects and devices are connected to the internet, gathering data on customer usage patterns and product performance. The emergence of machine learning has produced still more data.

While big data has come far, its usefulness is only just beginning. Cloud computing has expanded big data possibilities even further. The cloud offers truly elastic scalability, where developers can simply spin up ad hoc clusters to test a subset of data. And graph databases are becoming increasingly important as well, with their ability to display massive amounts of data in a way that makes analytics fast and comprehensive.

Discover the Insights in Your Data

• Who are the criminals passing dirty money around and committing financial services fraud?
• Who has been in contact with an infected person and needs to go into quarantine?
• How can feature engineering for data science be made simpler and more efficient?

Click below to access the 17 Use Cases for Graph Databases and Graph Analytics ebook.

Big Data Benefits

• Big data makes it possible for you to gain more complete answers because you have more information.
• More complete answers mean more confidence in the data—which means a completely different approach to tackling problems.

Big data can help you address a range of business activities, including customer experience and analytics. Here are just a few.

Download your free ebook to learn about:

• New ways you can use your data
• Ways the competition could be innovating
• Benefits and challenges of different use cases

While big data holds a lot of promise, it is not without its challenges.

First, big data is…big. Although new technologies have been developed for data storage, data volumes are doubling in size about every two years. Organizations still struggle to keep pace with their data and find ways to effectively store it.

But it’s not enough to just store the data. Data must be used to be valuable and that depends on curation. Clean data, or data that’s relevant to the client and organized in a way that enables meaningful analysis, requires a lot of work. Data scientists spend 50 to 80 percent of their time curating and preparing data before it can actually be used.

Finally, big data technology is changing at a rapid pace. A few years ago, Apache Hadoop was the popular technology used to handle big data. Then Apache Spark was introduced in 2014. Today, a combination of the two frameworks appears to be the best approach. Keeping up with big data technology is an ongoing challenge.

Discover more big data resources:

Big data gives you new insights that open up new opportunities and business models. Getting started involves three key actions:

1.  Integrate Big data brings together data from many disparate sources and applications. Traditional data integration mechanisms, such as extract, transform, and load (ETL) generally aren’t up to the task. It requires new strategies and technologies to analyze big data sets at terabyte, or even petabyte, scale.

During integration, you need to bring in the data, process it, and make sure it’s formatted and available in a form that your business analysts can get started with.

2.  Manage Big data requires storage. Your storage solution can be in the cloud, on premises, or both. You can store your data in any form you want and bring your desired processing requirements and necessary process engines to those data sets on an on-demand basis. Many people choose their storage solution according to where their data is currently residing. The cloud is gradually gaining popularity because it supports your current compute requirements and enables you to spin up resources as needed.

3.  Analyze Your investment in big data pays off when you analyze and act on your data. Get new clarity with a visual analysis of your varied data sets. Explore the data further to make new discoveries. Share your findings with others. Build data models with machine learning and artificial intelligence. Put your data to work.

To help you on your big data journey, we’ve put together some key best practices for you to keep in mind. Here are our guidelines for building a successful big data foundation.

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The state of AI in early 2024: Gen AI adoption spikes and starts to generate value

If 2023 was the year the world discovered generative AI (gen AI) , 2024 is the year organizations truly began using—and deriving business value from—this new technology. In the latest McKinsey Global Survey  on AI, 65 percent of respondents report that their organizations are regularly using gen AI, nearly double the percentage from our previous survey just ten months ago. Respondents’ expectations for gen AI’s impact remain as high as they were last year , with three-quarters predicting that gen AI will lead to significant or disruptive change in their industries in the years ahead.

About the authors

This article is a collaborative effort by Alex Singla , Alexander Sukharevsky , Lareina Yee , and Michael Chui , with Bryce Hall , representing views from QuantumBlack, AI by McKinsey, and McKinsey Digital.

Organizations are already seeing material benefits from gen AI use, reporting both cost decreases and revenue jumps in the business units deploying the technology. The survey also provides insights into the kinds of risks presented by gen AI—most notably, inaccuracy—as well as the emerging practices of top performers to mitigate those challenges and capture value.

AI adoption surges

Interest in generative AI has also brightened the spotlight on a broader set of AI capabilities. For the past six years, AI adoption by respondents’ organizations has hovered at about 50 percent. This year, the survey finds that adoption has jumped to 72 percent (Exhibit 1). And the interest is truly global in scope. Our 2023 survey found that AI adoption did not reach 66 percent in any region; however, this year more than two-thirds of respondents in nearly every region say their organizations are using AI. 1 Organizations based in Central and South America are the exception, with 58 percent of respondents working for organizations based in Central and South America reporting AI adoption. Looking by industry, the biggest increase in adoption can be found in professional services. 2 Includes respondents working for organizations focused on human resources, legal services, management consulting, market research, R&D, tax preparation, and training.

Also, responses suggest that companies are now using AI in more parts of the business. Half of respondents say their organizations have adopted AI in two or more business functions, up from less than a third of respondents in 2023 (Exhibit 2).

Gen AI adoption is most common in the functions where it can create the most value

Most respondents now report that their organizations—and they as individuals—are using gen AI. Sixty-five percent of respondents say their organizations are regularly using gen AI in at least one business function, up from one-third last year. The average organization using gen AI is doing so in two functions, most often in marketing and sales and in product and service development—two functions in which previous research  determined that gen AI adoption could generate the most value 3 “ The economic potential of generative AI: The next productivity frontier ,” McKinsey, June 14, 2023. —as well as in IT (Exhibit 3). The biggest increase from 2023 is found in marketing and sales, where reported adoption has more than doubled. Yet across functions, only two use cases, both within marketing and sales, are reported by 15 percent or more of respondents.

Gen AI also is weaving its way into respondents’ personal lives. Compared with 2023, respondents are much more likely to be using gen AI at work and even more likely to be using gen AI both at work and in their personal lives (Exhibit 4). The survey finds upticks in gen AI use across all regions, with the largest increases in Asia–Pacific and Greater China. Respondents at the highest seniority levels, meanwhile, show larger jumps in the use of gen Al tools for work and outside of work compared with their midlevel-management peers. Looking at specific industries, respondents working in energy and materials and in professional services report the largest increase in gen AI use.

Investments in gen AI and analytical AI are beginning to create value

The latest survey also shows how different industries are budgeting for gen AI. Responses suggest that, in many industries, organizations are about equally as likely to be investing more than 5 percent of their digital budgets in gen AI as they are in nongenerative, analytical-AI solutions (Exhibit 5). Yet in most industries, larger shares of respondents report that their organizations spend more than 20 percent on analytical AI than on gen AI. Looking ahead, most respondents—67 percent—expect their organizations to invest more in AI over the next three years.

Where are those investments paying off? For the first time, our latest survey explored the value created by gen AI use by business function. The function in which the largest share of respondents report seeing cost decreases is human resources. Respondents most commonly report meaningful revenue increases (of more than 5 percent) in supply chain and inventory management (Exhibit 6). For analytical AI, respondents most often report seeing cost benefits in service operations—in line with what we found last year —as well as meaningful revenue increases from AI use in marketing and sales.

Inaccuracy: The most recognized and experienced risk of gen AI use

As businesses begin to see the benefits of gen AI, they’re also recognizing the diverse risks associated with the technology. These can range from data management risks such as data privacy, bias, or intellectual property (IP) infringement to model management risks, which tend to focus on inaccurate output or lack of explainability. A third big risk category is security and incorrect use.

Respondents to the latest survey are more likely than they were last year to say their organizations consider inaccuracy and IP infringement to be relevant to their use of gen AI, and about half continue to view cybersecurity as a risk (Exhibit 7).

Conversely, respondents are less likely than they were last year to say their organizations consider workforce and labor displacement to be relevant risks and are not increasing efforts to mitigate them.

In fact, inaccuracy— which can affect use cases across the gen AI value chain , ranging from customer journeys and summarization to coding and creative content—is the only risk that respondents are significantly more likely than last year to say their organizations are actively working to mitigate.

Some organizations have already experienced negative consequences from the use of gen AI, with 44 percent of respondents saying their organizations have experienced at least one consequence (Exhibit 8). Respondents most often report inaccuracy as a risk that has affected their organizations, followed by cybersecurity and explainability.

Our previous research has found that there are several elements of governance that can help in scaling gen AI use responsibly, yet few respondents report having these risk-related practices in place. 4 “ Implementing generative AI with speed and safety ,” McKinsey Quarterly , March 13, 2024. For example, just 18 percent say their organizations have an enterprise-wide council or board with the authority to make decisions involving responsible AI governance, and only one-third say gen AI risk awareness and risk mitigation controls are required skill sets for technical talent.

Bringing gen AI capabilities to bear

The latest survey also sought to understand how, and how quickly, organizations are deploying these new gen AI tools. We have found three archetypes for implementing gen AI solutions : takers use off-the-shelf, publicly available solutions; shapers customize those tools with proprietary data and systems; and makers develop their own foundation models from scratch. 5 “ Technology’s generational moment with generative AI: A CIO and CTO guide ,” McKinsey, July 11, 2023. Across most industries, the survey results suggest that organizations are finding off-the-shelf offerings applicable to their business needs—though many are pursuing opportunities to customize models or even develop their own (Exhibit 9). About half of reported gen AI uses within respondents’ business functions are utilizing off-the-shelf, publicly available models or tools, with little or no customization. Respondents in energy and materials, technology, and media and telecommunications are more likely to report significant customization or tuning of publicly available models or developing their own proprietary models to address specific business needs.

Respondents most often report that their organizations required one to four months from the start of a project to put gen AI into production, though the time it takes varies by business function (Exhibit 10). It also depends upon the approach for acquiring those capabilities. Not surprisingly, reported uses of highly customized or proprietary models are 1.5 times more likely than off-the-shelf, publicly available models to take five months or more to implement.

Gen AI high performers are excelling despite facing challenges

Gen AI is a new technology, and organizations are still early in the journey of pursuing its opportunities and scaling it across functions. So it’s little surprise that only a small subset of respondents (46 out of 876) report that a meaningful share of their organizations’ EBIT can be attributed to their deployment of gen AI. Still, these gen AI leaders are worth examining closely. These, after all, are the early movers, who already attribute more than 10 percent of their organizations’ EBIT to their use of gen AI. Forty-two percent of these high performers say more than 20 percent of their EBIT is attributable to their use of nongenerative, analytical AI, and they span industries and regions—though most are at organizations with less than $1 billion in annual revenue. The AI-related practices at these organizations can offer guidance to those looking to create value from gen AI adoption at their own organizations.

To start, gen AI high performers are using gen AI in more business functions—an average of three functions, while others average two. They, like other organizations, are most likely to use gen AI in marketing and sales and product or service development, but they’re much more likely than others to use gen AI solutions in risk, legal, and compliance; in strategy and corporate finance; and in supply chain and inventory management. They’re more than three times as likely as others to be using gen AI in activities ranging from processing of accounting documents and risk assessment to R&D testing and pricing and promotions. While, overall, about half of reported gen AI applications within business functions are utilizing publicly available models or tools, gen AI high performers are less likely to use those off-the-shelf options than to either implement significantly customized versions of those tools or to develop their own proprietary foundation models.

What else are these high performers doing differently? For one thing, they are paying more attention to gen-AI-related risks. Perhaps because they are further along on their journeys, they are more likely than others to say their organizations have experienced every negative consequence from gen AI we asked about, from cybersecurity and personal privacy to explainability and IP infringement. Given that, they are more likely than others to report that their organizations consider those risks, as well as regulatory compliance, environmental impacts, and political stability, to be relevant to their gen AI use, and they say they take steps to mitigate more risks than others do.

Gen AI high performers are also much more likely to say their organizations follow a set of risk-related best practices (Exhibit 11). For example, they are nearly twice as likely as others to involve the legal function and embed risk reviews early on in the development of gen AI solutions—that is, to “ shift left .” They’re also much more likely than others to employ a wide range of other best practices, from strategy-related practices to those related to scaling.

In addition to experiencing the risks of gen AI adoption, high performers have encountered other challenges that can serve as warnings to others (Exhibit 12). Seventy percent say they have experienced difficulties with data, including defining processes for data governance, developing the ability to quickly integrate data into AI models, and an insufficient amount of training data, highlighting the essential role that data play in capturing value. High performers are also more likely than others to report experiencing challenges with their operating models, such as implementing agile ways of working and effective sprint performance management.

About the research

The online survey was in the field from February 22 to March 5, 2024, and garnered responses from 1,363 participants representing the full range of regions, industries, company sizes, functional specialties, and tenures. Of those respondents, 981 said their organizations had adopted AI in at least one business function, and 878 said their organizations were regularly using gen AI in at least one function. To adjust for differences in response rates, the data are weighted by the contribution of each respondent’s nation to global GDP.

Alex Singla and Alexander Sukharevsky  are global coleaders of QuantumBlack, AI by McKinsey, and senior partners in McKinsey’s Chicago and London offices, respectively; Lareina Yee  is a senior partner in the Bay Area office, where Michael Chui , a McKinsey Global Institute partner, is a partner; and Bryce Hall  is an associate partner in the Washington, DC, office.

They wish to thank Kaitlin Noe, Larry Kanter, Mallika Jhamb, and Shinjini Srivastava for their contributions to this work.

This article was edited by Heather Hanselman, a senior editor in McKinsey’s Atlanta office.

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