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Submissions/Open Access & Wikipedia: Opening the world's academic research to improve the world's most popular reference source

From Wikimania 2013 • Hong Kong

This is an accepted submission for Wikimania 2013.

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Submission no.
2066
Subject no.
P1
Title of the submission
Open Access & Wikipedia: Opening the world's academic research to improve the world's most popular reference source
introduction to open access
Type of submission
Panel
Author of the submission
Nick Shockey and Leslie Chan, with input from the other panelists
Country of origin
United States, Canada
Affiliation
The Right to Research Coalition; The Scholarly Publishing and Academic Resources Coalition (SPARC)
E-mail address
nick@arl.org
Username
nshockey
Personal homepage or blog
http://righttoresearch.org
Abstract
Open access is the practice of providing unrestricted access via the Internet to peer-reviewed scholarly journal articles. The panel will bring together experienced Wikipedians involved in the Open Access movement and other leaders from the Open Access community, to build dialogue and initiate collaboration between these closely aligned movements. The goal is to raise awareness about the value that opening up the body of scholarly and scientific research could have to the Wikipedia community, while promoting greater participation in the open access movement to improve the value of a highly significant global resource.
open access logo
Detailed proposal

The Open Access movement aims to make publicly funded scholarship freely available, expanding research impact and uptake by lowering barriers for citation and re-use. Wikipedia aims to cite authoritative sources for the information contained in the entries. In this regard, there is a natural synergy between Wikipedia and the open access movement.

When citations in Wikipedia articles point to sources in subscription-access journals, a Wikipedia reader will not be able to follow the link to the source article to find further information or to judge its credibility. Although Wikipedia’s clear and proper consensus is that sources need not be open access to be legitimate, readers benefit when source material is freely available to read online, and Wikipedia is a more credible and transparent resource when sources are open for all to evaluate.

Several years ago, John Willinsky (2007) pointed out that citation of open access research could serve as a positive feedback loop, encouraging more researchers to provide open access to their publications and increasing public readership to their research. As Google Scholar now routinely points reader to versions of published articles available through institutional repositories (IR) and open access journals, the opportunity for Wikipedians to cite authoritative research and for readers to follow up with the full sources has improved significantly.

The proposed panel aims to draw Wikipedians’ attention to the growing volume of open access publications while also calling attention to the growing synergy between open access and Wikipedia. As Wikipedia matures from a ready reference source into a gateway to constructive learning and knowledge production, scholars interested in the public dimension of their teaching and scholarship must take advantage of what Wikipedia has to offer. Moreover, ways on how to reuse reliable and free open access content in Wikimedia projects have to be explored.

The panel will bring together experienced Wikipedians involved in the Open Access movement and other leaders from the Open Access community, to build dialogue and initiate collaboration between these closely aligned movements. The goal is to raise awareness about the value that opening up the body of scholarly and scientific research could have to the Wikipedia community, while promoting greater participation in the open access movement to improve the value of a highly significant global resource.

Reference Willinsky, John (2007) What open access research can do for Wikipedia by John Willinsky. First Monday, volume 12, number 3 (March) URL: http://firstmonday.org/issues/issue12_3/willinsky/index.html

Panelists:


Track
Cultural and Educational Outreach
Length of presentation/talk
70 minutes, if possible
Language of presentation/talk
English
Will you attend Wikimania if your submission is not accepted?
Yes
Slides or further information (optional)
Special requests
If accepted, we would prefer to schedule this panel on the first day of Wikimania to best accomodate panelists' travel schedules


Interested attendees

If you are interested in attending this session, please sign with your username below. This will help reviewers to decide which sessions are of high interest. Sign with four tildes. (~~~~).

  1. Daniel Mietchen (talk) 02:21, 1 May 2013 (UTC) - see also Submissions/Wikimedia and Open Access and Submissions/Open Access Media Importer[reply]
  2. major interest of mine. thanks for putting this together. SarahStierch (talk) 15:09, 3 May 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  3. (I will probably be part of the panel, but OA-related presentations are very important)--Aubrey (talk) 21:32, 3 May 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  4. Anthonyhcole (talk) 02:56, 4 May 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  5. Micru (talk) 20:43, 4 May 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  6. Dimi z (talk) 12:11, 6 May 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  7. Ocaasi (talk) 21:47, 8 May 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  8. Mitchan14 (talk)
  9. Ijon (talk) 05:26, 16 May 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  10. Kavya Manohar (talk) 08:42, 17 May 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  11. Muriel Staub (WMCH) (talk) 08:14, 27 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  12. --SusikMkr (talk) 12:36, 4 August 2013 (UTC)[reply]
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