Grants:Programs/Wikimedia Research & Technology Fund/Wikimedia Research Fund
Quem?
Groups, individuals or organisations with research interests about Wikimedia movement
O quê?
Research proposals to contribute to generalizable knowledge or to strengthen the Wikimedia research community
Quando?
Less than 5 months processing time, one round in a year
Quanto?
2,000–50,000 USD
Please note: submissions for the Research Fund are currently closed. Check out this year's funded projects below and stay tuned for announcements about next year's fund.
Who we fund
The Research Fund provides support to individuals, groups, and organizations with interest in conducting research on or about Wikimedia projects. We encourage submissions from across research disciplines including but not limited to the humanities, social sciences, computer science, education, and law.
We prioritize supporting applicants who have limited access to research funding, are in regions of the world where the Wikimedia research community has less representation, are proposing work in coordination or collaboration with Wikimedia affiliates, and/or are proposing work that has potential for direct, positive impact on their local communities or the global Wikimedia communities.
O que financiamos
We welcome two types of submissions:
- In-depth research proposals to contribute to generalizable knowledge that has the potential to improve and expand our understanding of the Wikimedia projects and their impact, introduce technical and socio-technical solutions that can enhance the technology in support of the Wikimedia projects, and advance the Wikimedia Movement towards the 2030 strategic direction.
- Proposals that focus on strengthening, expanding and diversifying the community of researchers studying Wikimedia projects.
For other proposal types, please see other sources of funding, including the Wikimedia Community Fund and the Wikimedia Alliances Fund.
Eligibilidade
- Indivíduos, grupos e organizações podem se inscrever. Qualquer indivíduo pode estar em até 3 financiamentos abertos a qualquer momento. Isso inclui os Fundos Rápidos. Grupos ou organizações podem ter até 5 financiamentos abertos a qualquer momento.
- Os pedidos devem ser acima de USD 2,000 e até USD 50,000.
- O período de financiamento pode ser de até 12 meses de comprimento. O trabalho proposto deve começar antes de 1 de Junho de 2024 e terminar no máximo em 30 de Junho de 2025.
- Os apoiados terão que concordar com os requerimentos de relatório, assim como assinar um acordo de recebimento de verba (grant), e providenciar a informação necessária para processar o financiamento. Você pode ler mais sobre os critérios de eligibilidade aqui
- Nós esperamos que todos os agraciados do Fundo de Pesquisa adiram à Política de Espaço Amigável e ao Código de Conduta Universal da Wikimedia.
- Inscrições e relatórios serão aceitos tanto em inglês quanto em espanhol.
- Candidatos em potencial não deverão submeter uma proposta se ao menos um dos items abaixo for verdade:
- Ao menos um candidato seja empregado ou contratado pela Fundação Wikimedia nos últimos 24 meses;
- Pelo menos um candidato teve uma relação de conselheiro / conselheiro com um ou mais dos Presidentes do Comitê de Fundos de Pesquisa ou membros da equipe de Pesquisa da Wikimedia;
- Pelo menos um dos candidatos é um atual ou foi um ex Colaborador formal da equipe de pesquisa da Fundação Wikimedia nos últimos 24 meses;
- Nos últimos 24 meses, pelo menos um candidato foi coautor de uma publicação científica com os presidentes dos comitês.
Para elegibilidade do país, consulte a lista de países que foram financiados anteriormente.
Processo de inscrição e prazo
Please review our privacy statement prior to submitting your application.
Please use our Stage I submission template to prepare your submission. Please carefully read the document before preparing your final Stage I proposal.
The deadline for submissions to this year's Research Fund has now passed.
For proposals that have advanced to Stage II, please use our Stage II submission template to prepare your submission.
Como usar
Candidatura
- Fase I
- Candidatos submeterão propostas em resposta à chamada para Propostas do Fundo de Pesquisa.Todas as propostas estarão disponíveis publicamente para permitir que os membros da comunidade e os Comitês Regionais de Fundos forneçam feedback. O Comitê do Fundo de Pesquisa e os revisores avaliarão todas as propostas, levando em consideração a opinião da comunidade, e convidarão os principais candidatos a enviarem propostas completas para a próxima etapa.
- Fase Ⅱ
- Applicants whose proposals are invited for Stage Ⅱ submissions submit their full proposal. These proposals will be made publicly available and are significantly more elaborate than Stage Ⅰ proposals and will include a full budget. They will also need to include responses to meta-reviews from Stage I.
Processo de seleção
We will use a single-blind review process in which the identities of the applicants are known, but the Research Fund Committee reviewers are anonymous. Technical reviewers will self-declare their expertise for each proposal and disclose any potential conflicts of interest to Technical Review chairs. Each proposal will receive at least three technical reviews. The proposals will be discussed among the reviewers and the Technical Committee chairs. Each submission will receive a composite score based on this assessment and comprehensive reviews from the Technical Committee unit. Proposals may also receive input from the relevant Wikimedia affiliates or user groups. Each proposal can also receive public input from the Wikimedia volunteer communities through a structured feedback process on Meta-Wiki. The final decision will be made by the Research Fund Committee chairs considering the recommendations from the Technical Review chairs as well as the feedback and input from the Wikimedia Affiliates and the broader Wikimedia communities.
Selection criteria
We will assess submissions based on the following criteria:
- Research. The primary focus of the proposed work must be either to conduct research designed to contribute to generalizable knowledge or research community building. Because they are not focused on generalizable knowledge, research efforts on understanding the specific needs of an organization or community will not be considered. Note that proposals with primary focus on outreach, technology development/deployment, institutional support, or other non-research activities, or research focused on specific organizations are funded through other funds offered by the Wikimedia Foundation.
- Relevance. The research must be on or about Wikimedia projects or of significant importance to the Wikimedia projects.
- Impact. We aim to prioritize proposals that aim to enable the Wikimedia communities in making decisions or taking actions of significant impact as a result of the research conducted. We will give special consideration to proposals that directly address the Wikimedia 2030 Strategic Direction (including but not limited to the Movement Recommendations) as well as proposals that attempt to answer research questions in less commonly studied languages of Wikipedia.
- Geography of the applicants and their corresponding institutions. Because we aim to increase the geographical diversity of researchers who contribute to the Wikimedia projects, we encourage submissions from Central and South America, Africa, Eastern Europe and Asia and will give these applications special consideration.
- Community. We aim to fund work that helps the Wikimedia communities take the next step. We will prioritize proposals that support or work with Wikimedia user groups, affiliates, and developer communities. We encourage applicants to include one or more members of these communities in your team and consult Community Wishlists from 2019, 2020, and 2021 for ideas of problems raised by these groups.
- Prior contributions to related academic and/or research projects and/or the Wikimedia and free culture communities. We will review self-reported contributions by the applicants to gain a deeper understanding of applicants’ interests, skills and abilities.
Budgets
Requests can be up to USD 50,000 and we intend to give a minimum of six grants during this funding cycle. Detailed budgets are not required as part of initial submissions but we request rough estimates in the following categories (if applicable) along with a brief explanation:
- Salary or stipend
- Benefits
- Equipment
- Software
- Open access publishing costs
- Institutional overhead (up to 15% of total budget requested)
- Other (as specified)
Because the WMF mission is focused on education, budgets should not include faculty teaching “buyouts”—i.e., any budgeting for salary or effort that will result in a reduction of teaching. If the research project being proposed is absolutely not possible without a buyout, please provide context in your budget request and an exception will be considered by the Research Fund Committee.
Final grant amounts are up to the discretion of the Research Fund Committee, who may reach out to finalists to ask for a reduced budget and a proportionally reduced scope of work. Funds will be disbursed in one payment at the beginning of the funding period (As early as May 2024).
Ethics
All proposals should follow principles of ethical research and rules and guidelines related to human subjects research. We encourage authors to read the Menlo Report for further information on ethical principles, the Allman/Paxson IMC ‘07 paper for guidance on ethical data sharing, and the Sandvig et al. ‘14 paper on the ethics of algorithm audits. Finalists must address possible ethical challenges and how they will address them in their proposal. Institutional Review Board review (if applicable) needs to be completed before funds are distributed.
Research outputs
To make the results of the research actionable and reusable by the Wikimedia volunteer communities, affiliates and Foundation, applicants must ensure that any output of your research complies with the Wikimedia Foundation Open Access Policy. Applicants are encouraged to include open access publication costs as part of your budget.
Grantees are expected to create project pages on MetaWiki:Research documenting the progress of their work once a month. In addition, they are expected to complete final financial and project reports using provided templates, and present at a future Wikimedia Research event as well as at least at one event within their research community.
Grant IDs and WMF Acknowledgement in Publications
Each funded project will have a unique Grant ID which will be provided to grantees and posted on each project's corresponding Grant Meta page and Research Meta page. If a project was supported by the WMF Research Fund we suggest using the following acknowledgement in publications:
This research is supported [in part] by the Wikimedia Foundation’s Research Fund under Grant No. [grant ID]. The authors would like to thank [specific individuals or teams] at [the Wikimedia Foundation, another Wikimedia affiliate, or the Wikimedia community] for [help provided].
- Open call for applications, with office hours for interested applicants
- Review of Stage Ⅰ proposals, including desk rejection of proposals that are out of scope, eligibility check, technical review, community review, and regional fund Committee review
- Invitation to finalists to submit to Stage Ⅱ
- Technical review of Stage Ⅱ proposals
- Final decision
Important Dates
15 de dezembro de 2023
Stage Ⅰ application submission deadline
13 de fevereiro de 2024
Stage Ⅰ selection result notifications
18 de março de 2024
Stage Ⅱ application submission deadline
29 de abril de 2024
Stage Ⅱ selection result notifications
All deadlines are 23:59 Anywhere on Earth.
Review submissions
- Funded proposals
- Programs/Wikimedia Research Fund/Wikidata for the People of Africa
- Programs/Wikimedia Research Fund/Development of a training program for teachers to use Wikipedia as a resource for collaborative learning and the development of skills for digital citizenship
- Programs/Wikimedia Research Fund/Wikimedia versus traditional biographical encyclopedias. Overlaps, gaps, quality and future possibilities
- Programs/Wikimedia Research Fund/Cover Women
- Programs/Wikimedia Research Fund/Bridging the Gap Between Wikipedians and Scientists with Terminology-Aware Translation: A Case Study in Turkish
- Programs/Wikimedia Research Fund/Investigating Neurodivergent Wikimedian Experiences
- Programs/Wikimedia Research Fund/System Design for Increasing Adoption of AI-Assisted Image Tagging in Wikimedia Commons
- Programs/Wikimedia Research Fund/Developing Wikimedia Impact Metrics as a Sociotechnical Solution for Encouraging Funder/ Academic Engagement
- Programs/Wikimedia Research Fund/Addressing Wikipedia’s Gender Gaps Through Social Media Ads
Office Hours
We invite you to schedule 1:1 consultations with us to ask questions about the Research Fund program or the relevance of your proposed work. Schedule a session with Kinneret Gordon or schedule a session with Leila Zia. When scheduling your appointment, please provide a description of your proposed research topic or question.
Contact us
Please direct questions to research_fund wikimedia.org.
Organizing Committee
Grant committee chairs
- Benjamin Mako Hill (University of Washington)
- Leila Zia (Wikimedia Foundation)
Technical Committee chairs
- Aaron Shaw (Northwestern University)
- Miriam Redi (Wikimedia Foundation)
Workflow Chair
- Kinneret Gordon (Wikimedia Foundation)
Reviewers (FY 2023-24)
- Pablo Aragón (Wikimedia Foundation)
- Akhil Arora (Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Lausanne)
- Pablo Beytía (Pontificia Universidad Catolica de Chile)
- Hannah Brueckner (New York University Abu Dhabi)
- Ana María Castillo Hinojosa (Universitat Internacional de Catalunya)
- Kaylea Champion (University of Washington)
- Giovanni Colavizza (University of Bologna)
- Gianluca Demartini (University of Queensland)
- Djellel Difallah (New York University, Abu Dhabi)
- Shani Evenstein Sigalov (Tel Aviv University)
- David Garcia (Universität Konstanz)
- Martin Gerlach (Wikimedia Foundation)
- Kristina Gligoric (Stanford University)
- Jérôme Hergueux (CNRS)
- Dariusz Jemielniak (Kozminski University)
- Isaac Johnson (Northwestern University, Northwestern University)
- Steve Jankowski (University of Amsterdam)
- Lucie-Aimée Kaffee (Hugging Face)
- Isabelle Langrock (Institut d'Etudes Politiques de Paris (Sciences Po))
- Amanda Lawrence (Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology)
- Florian Lemmerich (Universität Passau)
- Daniele Metilli (University College London, University of London)
- Jonathan T. Morgan (CrowdStrike)
- Animesh Mukherjee (Indian Institute of Technology Kharagpur)
- Sneha Narayan (Carleton College)
- Tiziano Piccardi (Stanford University)
- Paolo Papotti (Eurecom)
- Diego Sáez Trumper (Wikimedia Foundation)
- Cristina Sarasua (Department of Informatics, University of Zurich, University of Zurich)
- Rossano Schifanella (University of Turin)
- Nicole Schwitter (Universität Mannheim)
- Elena Simperl (King's College London)
- Markus Strohmaier (Universität Mannheim)
- Nathan TeBlunthuis (Northwestern University)
- Jacob Thebault-Spieker (University of Wisconsin - Madison)
- Carla Toro (Universidad de Chile)
- Houcemeddine Turki (Faculty of Sciences of Sfax, University of Sfax, Tunisia)
- Nicholas Vincent (Simon Fraser University)
- Andreas Vlachos (University of Cambridge)
- Katrin Weller (GESIS Leibniz Institute for the Social Sciences)
- Jisung Yoon (Northwestern University)