WikiJournal User Group/Meetings/2020-02-27

WikiJournal User Group
Open access • Publication charge free • Public peer review • Wikipedia-integrated

Attendees

Date: 8:00 pm UTC, 27 February 2020
Location: meet.jit.si/WikiJournalUserGroup

Facilitator: Jack Nunn

Agenda

20 mins - Presentation, summary & update
- WikiJournals background and and project status update - Thomas Shafee (File:WikiJournal Open Meeting 2020.pdf)
- Strategy Summit - update from Strategy Liaison - Jack Nunn (5min)
40 minutes - Discussion, questions, ideas & feedback open to all participants
- Do we need an FAQ?
- What are the best ways to grow?
- What other publishing formats might be useful?
- Other methods of Wikimedia engagement?
- How’s the integration with other WikiProjects?
- General ideas on 2020 priorities?
- Feedback on Wikimedia Foundation strategy?

Background

Extended content

As sent out in mailing list emails

The WikiJournal User Group runs a set of peer reviewed academic journals that have the unique feature of being highly Wikipedia integrated. Papers can include links to Wikipedia pages, figures are all uploaded to Commons, and suitable material (or even whole articles) can be copied over to Wikipedia. In fact, Wikipedia pages have even been submitted to the journals for peer review.

The concept is to couple the rigour of academic peer review with the extreme reach of the wiki ecosystem. This improves the accuracy of the encyclopedia and its sister projects, and rewards authors with citable, indexed publications. Authors are treated the same whether they are professors or students, with a focus on the article’s accuracy and referencing.

Peer reviews are public (example) and 75% of reviewers agree to have their identities open.

Article formats are flexible and have included:

Broad review article that also becomes a Wikipedia page (example)
Existing Wikipedia page submitted for peer review (example)
Focused review articles that have images or text added to Wikipedia pages (example)
Technical reviews that can accompany a Wikipedia page (example)
Stand-alone research articles (example)

Can't get enough?

Follow us at twitter on @WikiJMed | @WikiJSci | @WikiJHum
See out application to the WMF to found a sister project site
Join the WikiJournals general mailing list
Read this piece in the Signpost

Notes

File:WikiJournal Open Meeting 2020 Feb.pdf

slides for first 15 mins

Minutes were drafted in this google doc

See slides for current status update
Jack Nunn - Strategy Liaison - If you have any feedback on the strategy you can either email me (Jack.Nunn@Scienceforall.world), comment in our user group/relevant wiki pages or follow other below.
- Key links:
- The main feedback for the strategy so far is to try to incorporate the word ‘trust’ into the strategy, making it clear Wikimedia intends to be a trusted information source (something like Cochrane’s statement ‘Trusted evidence’). In an era of ‘fake news’ we need a statement about how can we strengthen trust in our internal processes. One such project the Wiki Journals are involved in developing is STARDIT, allowing reporting of who created an information resource and how: https://scienceforall.world/stardit/
FAQ idea:
- Pro:
  - Several comments of support
  - Lots of details currently buried in longer guideline in ad info pages
  - Journals and their relationships to other Wikimedia projects can be hard to explain briefly
  - Some intend to present on WikiJournals at academic conferences, so FAQ may be useful for answer questions quickly
  - Useful for complete newbies
- Cons
  - Disadvantages listed by UK Government’s Digital Service and US 18F agency
  - May make more sense for novel technical/social ideas?
  - Alternatives?
Increasing engagement ideas
- Perhaps someone could be on the Open Science Talk podcast? https://site.uit.no/ub/
- Also Wikipodden? Swedish and English language episodes.
- We need to make our social media more accessible to the scientific layman
  - for example - I have Guardian Science following me on Twitter, I put out new research and other things that not just academics like to read
  - IMO if we can get the social media to make more people aware of us, it would help sweep in academics as well
- Could make single slide / 3-slide summary for people to use when presenting at conferences
- As an academic librarian, I help authors find suitable journals for their articles ... I'd like suggestions for when I would recommend a Wiki journal.
  - Kelee: Jere, I am also an academic librarian. And I think it depends. I am going to highly recommend it for graduate students, and possibly senior undergraduate students. I may not suggest it as highly for faculty unless they are really interested in open access
  - If grant funding compliance requires efforts to inform public
  - Produce balanced academic portfolio/CV to complement other journal outputs
    - Can track pageviews for both the articles themselves, as well as anything copied to WP
    - I'd like to have more statistics on taxonomy of article types on WJ, for example original content vs encyclopedic
  - get an idea of where the community is, and where it can be in the future
  - Mark - no journal charge to access, bigger potential audience, in the process of getting recognized by reputable bodies
  - Any ideas on when WikiJournal’s wouldn’t be suitable?
    - Avoid intending to overwrite existing established or contested Wikipedia page - any content copied to WP by consent of WP community consensus
    - Writing from countries where WMF sites are banned
    - Let's consider why people wouldn't recommend wiki journals for future meetings
  - Has there been difficulty transferring WJ articles to WP
    - Mainly been well received, but one example where article did not meet MEDMOS
Expanding to other languages
- Status of French sister journal is stalled. People of initial interest are no longer active.
- Main options for increasing multilingualism:
  1. New fully non-English sister journals
  2. Fully-non English articles in existing journals
  3. Translate English articles to other languages
  4. Translate English abstracts for articles to other languages
  - Above options require different amounts of volunteer efforts, first one requires a critical mass of editors to begin, first two require organising peer review in non-English
- It’s probably better to use the Translate extension (like Commons or Meta) rather than having multiple sites (one per language, like Wikipedia or Wikiversity) - But if we’re not having multiple sites, wouldn’t it be reasonable to aim for a subdomain like journal.wikimedia.org (like Commons or Meta) rather than wikijournal.org? It would be much easier to implement (at a technical level) and it would probably be easier for the WMF to accept. Also, it would add the Wikimedia branding to the project right from the URL, which is arguably a good thing.
- Spanish language community may be highly keen on setting up a journal or getting involved in increasing multilingualism of existing journals.
- just a note, i myself am a Spanish speaker...but unfortunately, i am telling you from experience, articles published in English get more reading, and a higher citation number, which is something people are going after in academia in general...I think bi-lingual articles are a possible solution; but I myself would not publish in my other mother tongue (Spanish).
- Comment from Makeda: so my experience is that English is the lingua franca of academic medicine...so as an editor on Radiopaedia, although I interact with people in Spanish or Portuguese behind the scenes in some cases (e.g. rewriting case reports to our standards) both sides prefer to publish the final stuff in English to increase global impact- this is my experience
- RE non- English @Makeda and @Glen - you might be interested in this project we're working on which will work across languages https://scienceforall.world/stardit/
- I actually agree that translating the abstracts is a good idea - but, publishing not in English is problematic. I can review articles in Spanish.
- I'm not familiar with the extension, but usually algorithmic translation is awful
How easy is it to start a new Wikimedia journals (now and if sister project is approved)?
- Does each journal need to be indexed separately? Yes, each would have to apply to indexing services separately.
- How long does it take to make a new journal? Technical aspect v quick, but requires critical mass editorial board, effort, and patience
- Have focused on smaller number of broader journals so far to minimise having to turn away submissions. Also several indexing services require 40 published articles before applying.
- However for subscription journals considering flipping to OA, or already existing editorial boards, could easily found new journal.
- Current technical limitations within WV that can make processes inefficient. Implementation of possible sister project should be able to make several aspects more efficient.
- We publish 20+ OA journals on OJS in my library and when we get new journals, we coach them to build several issues of potential content before launching. My question about when I would recommend a Wiki journal ... is more about scope and format, than reputation. It seems like the fact that the journals want to publish somethings that are Wikipedia articles and somethings that are not ... muddies scope.
Internationlism & geographic diversity of editors
- Overall internationalism ok, but still biased to US+Europe
- some places have very researchers with very low internet bandwidth...so we could think about how to get to them. this is not theoretical, i know for example a post-doc in south africa who studies malaria who has to go to a friend to even get on the internet
Wikipedia articles being submitted to become WikiJournal articles
- Mark Worthen said he agrees with Lionel Scheepmans’ post, “Stop publishing Wikipedia articles on WJ”. Discussion ensued.
- Note: I am not concerned about WikiJournal articles being adapted as a Wikipedia article.
- Cons and Pros of WP->WJ (see w:WP:W2J and w:WP:JAN) direction summarised by Thomas:
  - Cons
    - Can lead to confusion about scope WJ vs WP
    - Such articles outside scope of WV (where WJ currently hosted)
    - WP already has internal editorial review (Good & Featured article review)
    - How to quantify the contributions of wikipedians other than the submitting author
  - Pros
    - May be best option for WP pages C-class an above (rather than rewrite from scratch at WJ and overwrite after publication)
    - Even from stub/start/absent WP pages, there is some talk with medical topics to encourage initial drafting on WP first to ensure w:WP:MEDMOS-compliance
    - If people initially draft their content in WP (e.g. as done with w:lysenin) then could be annoyed to find out no longer allowed to submit to WJ. Could disincentive direct WP contribution for people wanting to ‘save their efforts’ to submit later to WJ.
    - Also allows articles that have gone WJ->WP to have updated versions like textbooks, with peer review of updates since last round
    - Seems to be demand (otherwise unmet) at w:WP:JAN
Jitsi had significant problems with people’s audio either breaking up or disappearing entirely, particularly when we had more people in the call. Very disruptive. Will have to use Zoom in future for large attendance numbers.
Maybe we should do a public meeting in three months?

Action Items

Copy the minutes from the google doc to metawiki within 48 hours after the meeting (Thomas Shafee)