Mikhail Lyubansky dreads seeing a research paper full of Wikipedia citations, but the clinical psychologist and lecturer at the University of Illinois nevertheless encourages students to use the web site's entries as a supplement to class readings and lectures.

Eight years after Wikipedia's launch, professors such as Lyubansky have come to accept the free online encyclopedia--which can be edited by any registered user with web access--as a legitimate research tool for students, especially after the site announced changes last month to its editing policies.

Entries written by new Wikipedia users now will be edited by regular contributors, and changes to the biographies of celebrities or controversial figures will be reviewed before they go live on the site, said Erik Moeller, deputy director of the Wikimedia Foundation, adding in a blog post that "false information can do the most serious harm to an individual."

The policy shift comes after years of criticism by many in academia who saw the anonymity of Wikipedia contributors as a drawback for serious research. Wikipedia officials showed their renewed commitment to accuracy Sept. 14, when the site warned Japanese video game company Tecmo to stop editing its Wikipedia page. A Wikipedia contributor with a Tecmo IP address was found to have removed unsavory information about the company's legal fight with a former employee.

Educators still say students should view any free, web-based resource with a skeptical eye, but Wikipedia's editing changes and its continued evolution as it strives to be an authoritative source of information have strengthened confidence among college instructors.

"I'm not necessarily someone who thinks all information should come from the top down," said Lyubansky, who added that a student's grade would be docked for over-citing Wikipedia, just as it would if a research assignment in the 1990s only mentioned one encyclopedia. "But it's a great place to start, because it's a number of people deciding what is important about a particular person or topic or thing."

Douglas Giles, a philosophy professor at Elmhurst College in Elmhurst, Ill., said educators' opposition to Wikipedia is often rooted in a belief that students should look to peer-reviewed journals and print articles for sources of legitimate research.

"Professors who forbid Wikipedia are, in my opinion, being silly," Giles said. "The prejudice some professors have against Wikipedia … stems more from an ivory-tower elitism than any actual knowledge of the content of Wikipedia. One can easily find points of contention in any research tool."

Accepting an online arena of contributors, Giles said, might be difficult for professors steeped in college tradition.

"Some of these anti-Wikipedia professors will not be satisfied with any policies Wikipedia develops, because they find the open-source paradigm of Wikipedia hard to accept," he said.