Royal Society of Chemistry 2014 Event

Background

“Wikipedia is now the first port of call for people seeking information on subjects that include scientific topics. Like it or not, other scientists and the public are using it to get an overview of your specialist area. Wikipedia's user-friendly global reach offers an unprecedented opportunity for public engagement with science.” Alex Bateman and Darren Logan, letter to Nature, 8 December 2010

The Royal Society of Chemistry (RSC) is a learned society and professional body for chemical scientists. With 48,000 members and a knowledge business that spans the globe, the RSC is a not-for-profit organisation with 170 years of history and an international vision for the future. Its mission it to work to shape the future of the chemical sciences – for the benefit of science and humanity.

As a result of a discussion between John Cummings, our Wikimedian-in-Residence at the Natural History Museum and Science Museum, and staff members of the Royal Society of Chemistry, a collaborative event between RSC and WMUK will take place on Friday 28 March 2014 at Burlington House, the London home of the RSC.

The event will consist of a morning session intended to give an introduction to editing Wikipedia, and an afternoon session where participants in London will be joined online by interested Wikipedians to create or improve Wikipedia articles related to chemistry.

Draft programme

• Friday 28 March 2014
• Burlington House, London

Programme

Time	Activity
10:00–10:30	arrival, registration and coffee
10:30–10:40	Welcome and introduction to the day
10:40–12:30	Introduction to Wikipedia: basic editing (with practical training), the importance of referencing, adding and using images, conflict of interest
12:30–13:30	Lunch and networking
13:30–14:00	Chemistry & Wikipedia: session run by RSC staff looking at chemical information in Wikipedia, and how ChemSpider can help you to find information and provide resources to help add chemical information to wiki pages
14:00–16:00	Editathon: time to practice on editing with one-to-one assistance
16:00–16:30	Closing session: review of the editing done on the day and help on how to keep in touch; encouragement in continuing editing to retain new editors

Topics to edit

Suggestions are welcome below:

• Female Fellows of the Royal Society of Chemistry
• Fellows of the Royal Society of Chemistry, Past Presidents and notable chemists including:

Dr Helen Neville

Reverend Ronald Lancaster, founder of Kimbolton Fireworks EDWIN

Dr Martha Annie Whiteley

Herbert Garland DEBRA

John Mason Ward

John Howard Purnell

Edward William Abel

• Many articles on inorganic and organometallic compounds lack info on their crystal structures with bond distances and angles.
• Edit in an area where you are expert or where you have a fascination, but avoid citing yourself or your colleagues. A good starting point is material that is covered in a textbook or monograph.
• Articles on techniques often are lacking illustrative spectra or related measurements of a graphical nature.
• Most of Wiki-chemistry is written by academically oriented editors, but much real-world chemistry is quite different in character. Industrial perspectives are especially welcome since they often impact more directly on most people.
• Chemistry is a very big topic - all of the physical world is chemical in nature- so consider adding chemical content to topics well outside of traditional chemistry areas - what is "stuff" made of?
• On the English language Wikipedia we have 26 top importance articles that are only start class and 22 high importance articles that are only stubs. Can we get these up at least one quality class?

Bear in mind that tens of thousands of publications appear annually in the chemical literature. Thus, citations to specialized journal articles are usually disfavored. Instead we strive to cite reviews and books. The guideline is "Primary, secondary and tertiary sources". In the same vein, Wikipedia is an encyclopedia, it is not a technical review journal such as Chem. Soc. Rev. We do not aspire to record or describe current (or not so current) factoids.

Participation

In person

Registration is now closed. For information please send an email to:

• communicationsrsc.org

Online

Interested Wikipedians are invited to join us online - we have set up the IRC channel irc://freenode/wmuk-rsc - between 14:00 and 16:00 on Friday 28 March 2014 to collaborate on improving the coverage of chemistry and chemists on Wikipedia.

For an introduction watch this webinar with Martin Walker, SUNY Potsdam. For a basic editing tutorial see Wikipedia:Tutorial, and Wikipedia:Ten Simple Rules for Editing Wikipedia is short, written for scientists, and full of good advice. Or try this one - four modules, taking one hour it says.

Follow the conversation on twitter: @RSC_Comms #RSCwiki2014

If you are intending to join us remotely, please sign up below:

use: * {{u-en | Your_username_on_English_Wikipedia }}

• Example
• ChrCC

Trainers

The plan is for 20 members of the RSC to attend. I'd like to use a maximum of 5 trainers to ensure that the editing sessions have sufficient one-to-one help available. The following have expressed an interest in being involved in the Wikipedia training:

• RexxS
• HJ Mitchell
• Charles Matthews
• Pigsonthewing (Andy Mabbett)
• Johnbod