[Open-access] [open-science] OKF at Open Repositories 2014

Fri Dec 6 18:58:48 UTC 2013

Scholarship and wikipedia - evidence to date?

Thanks Daniel for pointing to the latest on the PLoS Computational Biology / Wikipedia pilot.

Here is the summary of progress to date from the PLoS 2012/13 Progress Update:

PLOS Computational Biology advanced its project to boost Wikipedia’s content with the publication of four new topic pages<http://blogs.plos.org/plos/2013/03/to-wikipedia-and-beyond-topic-pages-from-plos-computational-biology-4/>, written in the style of a Wikipedia article. Topic pages represent a new level of interaction between publishers, researchers and the public. The review process is open, with readers and authors able to see the review history and reviewer identities. Once finalized, a version of record is published in PLOS Computational Biology and included as part of the Education collection<http://www.ploscollections.org/article/browse/issue/info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fissue.pcol.v03.i02>. The text is uploaded to Wikipedia, where it may be further updated and enhanced by the Wikipedia community. The initiative, which was proposed and is run by the scientific community, has received positive feedback.
http://www.plos.org/about/what-is-plos/progress-updates/

If a willing scholarly community with an interest in this experiment has only come up with 4 wikipedia pages, it is quite a stretch to extrapolate from this a wide-spread desire by the scholarly community at large to move our works to Wikipedia. If anything, this indicates a limited interest and suggests that those who experimented in this area are seeing reasons to move slowly and cautiously. It would helpful if those involved would share their experiences - to supplement the limited quantitative data (4 topic pages) with further quantitative data (e.g. what percentage of authors / articles were involved in the pilot) and qualitative data (i.e. what has been learned to date). Perhaps this would make a good PLoS ONE article - a good illustration of how we can learn even without a stellar success to show off?

Here is the PLoS site Daniel points to:
http://topicpages.ploscompbiol.org/wiki/Category:PLoS_Computational_Biology_articles

best,

--
Dr. Heather Morrison
Assistant Professor
École des sciences de l'information / School of Information Studies
University of Ottawa
613-562-5800 ext. 7634
http://www.sis.uottawa.ca/faculty/hmorrison.html
Heather.Morrison at uottawa.ca<mailto:Heather.Morrison at uottawa.ca>

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