[open-science] Call for participation: Survey on barriers to Wikipedia participation among scientists/academics

Mon Feb 21 13:19:53 UTC 2011

Dear all,

[Apologies for cross-posting]

We would value your contribution to a survey we launched some days ago to
understand expert barriers to participation to Wikipedia:
http://bit.ly/ExpertBarriers.

Context

Wikipedia is increasingly used by university students for "pre-research", to
gain context and explore ideas for course assignments and research projects
[1]. Yet many among scientists,

academics and other experts are reluctant to contribute to Wikipedia,
despite a growing number of calls from the scientific community to join the
project [2-3].

The initiative

The Wikimedia Research Committee [4] has just launched a survey to
understand why scientists, academics and other experts do (or do not)
contribute to Wikipedia and other collaborative projects, and whether
individual motivation aligns with shared perceptions of Wikipedia within
expert communities. We hope this may help us identify ways around barriers
to expert participation. The survey is anonymous and takes about 20 min to
complete. Please help us circulate the link among your colleagues and
collaborators:

http://bit.ly/ExpertBarriers

Dario Taraborelli

Panagiota Alevizou

Daniel Mietchen

[1] http://chronicle.com/article/article-content/125899/

[2] http://www.jmir.org/2011/1/e14/

[3]
http://www.psychologicalscience.org/index.php/members/aps-wikipedia-initiative/

[4] http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Research_Committee

------------

Dr Panagiota Alevizou

Research Fellow

Centre for Research in Education and Educational Technology

The Open University, Walton Hall

Milton Keynes, MK7 6AA

Email: p.alevizou at open.ac.uk

Website: http://iet.open.ac.uk/people/p.alevizou

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