Improving the troubled relationship between Scientists & Wikipedia
Experience of the wikipedian in residence scheme at the Royal Society @RoyalSociety of London as part of the first Wikipedia Science Conference @ExploreWellcome
Duncan Hull @dullhunk University of Manchester & John Byrne User:Johnbod Wikipedian in Residence Royal Society & CRUK Wikipedia Science Conference @WellcomeTrust London 2nd & 3rd September 2015
covering notable scholars properly ... might be producing an inaccurate image of academics on the front end of science.” Samoilenko & Yasseri (2014) Quan3ta3ve analysis of Wikipedia coverage, EPJ Data Science h[p://doi.org/66r via the Oxford Internet Ins3tute (OII)
no X 2. Research? nada X 3. Career? nope X 4. Funding? E.g. orcid.org non X 5. Publica3ons? [Cita3on-‐needed] doi.org naw X 6. Collaborators, PhD students & postdocs? nein X 7. Pictures? (CC-‐BY / CC-‐BY-‐SA license) null X If wiki-‐biographies exist…
Society (FRS) Darwin Newton Turing Hodgkin Einstein Hawking Berners-‐Lee Geim Ramakrishnan Blackburn approx: 50 new Fellows / year for 350 years 8000 Fellows (since 1660) 1400 Living (FRS) 160 Foreign (ForMemRS) 160 Women 280 Nobels ( )
to encourage the development and use of science for the benefit of humanity” “… every single person on the planet is given free access to the sum of all human knowledge” Note significant overlap
par3cularly Women in Wikipedia • Internal training sessions ran at the Royal Society h[p://enwp.org/Wikipedia:WikiProject_Royal_Society • Ongoing rela3onship and understanding between Royal Society and Wikipedia editors
published CC-‐BY-‐SA (2014 & 2015) • h[ps://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/ Category:Images_released_by_the_Royal_Society • Biographical data published at h[p://www.royalsociety.org released CC-‐BY-‐SA allowing easier re-‐use on Wikipedia and elsewhere • Journal subscrip3on offer renewed & extended to 75 subscrip3ons h[p://enwp.org/Wikipedia:Royal_Society_Journals
help… – Be[er reflect Scien3sts (and Science) in Wikipedia – Create new biographies that don’t exist yet – Improve exis3ng biographies • Maybe if Wikipedia loved scien3st a bit more, they might be more inclined to edit it? • More pictures available under CC-‐BY license e.g. – royalsociety.org/library/collec3ons – h[ps://pictures.royalsociety.org • More learned socie3es (and funding bodies) to employ wikipedians in residence
Organiza3on (EMBO), Academy of Medical Sciences, Royal Academy of Engineering, Zoological Society of London, Ins3tute of Physics, Linnean Society, IET, Royal Astronomical Society, Royal Society of Biology… etc
(and data) are used by thousands of people (and machines) around the globe: 26 million page views per hour* • Entertaining to edit biographies of scien3sts you don’t know personally for Neutral Point of View (NPOV) • Might encourage more scien3st editors? *According to h[ps:// wikimania2015.wikimedia.org /wiki/Submissions/ The_next_million_ar3cles_in_ Wikipedia
Tennant, David Silverthorne, Aosaf Afzal @RoyalSociety • Mar3n Poulter, University of Bristol @mlpoulter • Wikimedia UK @WikimediaUK • All the contributors to wiki-‐biographies (too numerous to men3on here)