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;Publishing scholarly papers with, and on, Wikipedia
;The unusual suspects...


[[File:Astragalus_mayeri.jpg|right|thumb|200px|Image from an Open Access journal article, shared on Wikimedia Commons by Daniel Mietchen. Click on the image for credits.]]
[[File:Crop_of_The_Artist_at_Work_YORAG-R2396.jpg|right|thumb|200px|A self portrait by Mary Ellen Best]]


''This post was written by Dr Martin Poulter, Jisc Wikimedia ambassador''
''This post was written by Pat Hadley, Wikimedian in Residence at York Museums Trust''


Wikipedia welcomes expert contributions, and is one of the most direct ways to promote public understanding of a subject area, but it isn’t always in researchers’ personal interest to contribute. It may seem as though any time spent writing for Wikipedia is less time to write the research papers which will advance their careers. One scholarly society, and its open access journal, have found how to do both at once.
A volcanologist, watercolourist, botanist and forger….walk into a bar? No, in this case the unlikeliness of our characters was not the set up for a bad joke. In fact, we had an even larger cast of York’s luminaries as the focus for our Wikipedia edit-a-thon at the Hospitium on March 16th. This public event was the culmination of my role as Wikipedian-in-Residence; a sixth-month residency helping the trust to share its collections through the online encyclopedia.


A paper is a fixed part of the scholarly literature, with a unique citation and the credibility that comes from being peer-reviewed. It will be aimed at a niche audience of other researchers, but will count towards the authors’ prestige, including the formal research assessment processes that shape their careers.
16 keen participants and eight members of YMT staff gathered on a surprisingly spring-like Sunday with the aim of improving content on Wikipedia – the world’s sixth-most popular website – using content from the collections and archives of the Trust. The event attracted keen York historians, experienced Wikipedians and those new to both. Curators had prepared lots of resources, participants brought their laptops and we had plenty of tea and biscuits to fuel us through the day. Groups spontaneously gathered around articles they wanted to tackle and could get help with resources or the technicalities of editing.


A publicly-editable Wikipedia article lacks that guarantee of reliability, but has benefits of its own. Being editable means that it can change to reflect new knowledge. Readability is enhanced by linking terms to their own explanatory articles. With Wikipedia being massively multilingual, an informative article can be translated into other languages. It may reach a very wide public audience, informing them about theories or discoveries and showing them how a subject is researched. For a researcher, contributing to Wikipedia may benefit their discipline as a whole by informing current and potential students and the wider public, yet it takes time away from activities that get career recognition.
The day was themed around the lives and work of York’s luminaries who lived between 1800-1950. We were fairly broad with our definition though and wanted to encourage people to document some of York’s lesser-known figures. These included:


<span class="plainlinks">[https://blog.wikimedia.org.uk/2014/03/publishing-scholarly-papers-with-and-on-wikipedia/<nowiki>[</nowiki>Post continues...<nowiki>]</nowiki>]</span>
*[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mary_Ellen_Best Mary Ellen Best] – A key female Victorian artist. Best painted domestic interiors, in contrast to many of her contemporaries. Best has a number of works in the York Art Gallery but had no biography on Wikipedia until the edit-a-thon. A few days later, her article featured in a Did you know? on the front page of Wikipedia, creating 3500 views!
*[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Walter_Harvey-Brook Walter Harvey-Brook] – Was the Yorkshire Museum’s honorary curator of Medieval Archaeology and designed much of the Museum Gardens. Brook’s paintings, sketches and archaeological notes are key parts of the collections. His article was created during the edit-a-thon.
*[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tempest_Anderson Tempest Anderson] – Volcanologist, doctor, adventurer. Anderson’s images have been uploaded by the museum for use on Wikipedia. Some of his best are now available to use. His biography was significantly updated.
*[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edward_Simpson_(forger) Edward Simpson] – less of a ‘luminary’ Simpson was an itinerant archaeological forger known as ‘Flint Jack’. His biography was substantially improved during the edit-a-thon
 
<span class="plainlinks">[https://blog.wikimedia.org.uk/2014/03/the-unusual-suspects/<nowiki>[</nowiki>Post continues...<nowiki>]</nowiki>]</span>


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Revision as of 13:41, 31 March 2014

Cymraeg | English

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