Wikipedia Science Conference

The Wellcome Trust's Darwin Room

We are planning a two-day conference, around the intersection of STEM subjects and Wikimedia, to take place in 2015.

Details

The Gibbs Building

Where?

The Gibbs Building, Euston Road, London NW1 2BE (provisionally). This is opposite Euston Square tube and within easy walking distance of three other tube stations.

Despite the London location, this will aim to be a national conference and we will try to schedule it with long-distance travellers in mind.

When?

To be decided: The Easter holiday and early September are both possibilities. Early September gives us longer to build up interest, but it's a crowded time for science conferences. We don't want to clash with EduWiki if that happens in 2015. Please weigh in!

Cost?

Costs are low thanks to the generosity of the two charities involved (Wellcome and Wikimedia UK) so we anticipate that this will be free or very cheap to attendees.

Audience

• Researchers and educators in STEM subjects
• Science communicators
• Librarians & other information professionals
• Managers & funders of research
• Wikipedia/ Wikimedia volunteers and staff

Themes

Note: a theme appearing here does not mean that it will be covered exhaustively in the conference. These themes define the overlap of Wikipedia and science: it will be up to the participants to decide which themes to focus on.

• Wikipedia and Wikimedia (including Wikidata, Wikisource, Wikimedia Commons...) as platforms for promoting informed public discussion of scientific topics (acknowledging that the public have a curiosity about all sorts of scientific topics, and overwhelmingly use Wikipedia as a starting point to self-educate).
• Wikipedia and Wikimedia as a platform for research (e.g. the Research portal).
• Wikipedia and Wikimedia as a model for scientific publishing and citizen science (including Wiki-to-Journal publication, Journal-to-Wiki publication, altmetrics, machine-extraction of data from published research, open bibliographic data, data citation, crowdsourced enhancement of scholarly databases, integration of Wikipedia with open/free services such as Figshare, ORCID, Flickr...)
• Wikipedia and Wikimedia as platforms for scientific education.
• Women in STEM subjects: is Wikipedia reinforcing stereotypes or providing role models? What is being done?

Programme

Invited speakers

• Dr Daniel Mietchen (User:Daniel Mietchen) has agreed in principle.
• MLP will approach Dr Peter Murray Rust for a follow-up on his Wikimania talk.
• It would be great to have a speaker from the Wellcome Trust
• Other suggestions? Who would be ideal to talk about women in science & their biographies on Wikipedia?

Submitted panels/ demos

We should call for session proposals on the above themes, although there will not be much time available. Session formats can follow the pattern of Wikimania:

• Lightning talks/demos (10 mins)
• Presentations (20 mins + 10 mins questions)
• Panels (at least 3 speakers, 50 mins)

Unconference

A block of the conference will be left unplanned so that attendees can divide into groups and run short sessions on what they are interested in. Could we have a noticeboard where people post "I want to tell people about..." and "I want to learn about..."?

Training

Attendees should be able to get training on wiki editing, and on finding articles in their subject area. This could be done as a half-day session.

Evening event

There will be some sort of networking or cultural event in the evening between the two days. Perhaps a visit to the Wellcome Library next door?

Hackathon

There is lots of potential for software development at the interface between science and Wikimedia. Probably best as a satellite event.

Interested Wikimedians

The following have expressed an interest

• User:MartinPoulter
• User:Johnbod
• User:Pigsonthewing
• User:Yaris678
• User:HenryScow
• User:Fnorman
• User:Sjgknight
• User:Daniel Mietchen
• add yourself

WMUK Staff: Stevie Benton

Rationale

This conference stems from a proposal on Wikimedia UK's Water Cooler.

In terms of Wikimedia UK's strategic goals:

Running a national conference with high impact partners raises our own profile and that of our mission (G1.3), is likely to bring new highly skilled volunteers into the movement (G2a) and provide leverage and a supportive environment to raise awareness of the benefits of 'open' (G3.2/3).

G1 Develop open knowledge

The conference will explore how, by engaging with the Wikimedia sites, scientists can advance their professional goals of promoting use and citation of research, promoting informed public discussion and even improving the quality of research outputs. It will also train them in the basic skills of contributing, whether by directly editing, or indirectly by making research outputs available with appropriate licences and technical interfaces.

G4 Encourage and support technological innovation

There are scientists using Wikipedia and its sister sites in novel ways to improve or disseminate scientific knowledge. Examples: the PFAM proteins database at the Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute, PLOS Computational Biology's "Topic pages" and Peter Murray Rust's automated extraction of facts from published papers. The conference will bring these people together with similar professionals to disseminate their work. Greater mutual understanding between Wikimedia communities and professional scientists will help these projects succeed.

G5 Develop, support, and engage with other Wikimedia and open knowledge communities

The Open Access community is a using a mix of top-down and bottom-up influences to change mainstream scientific practice so that scientific outputs of research. The Wikimedia movement and the Open Access movement have strongly aligned aims and values. Many of the people involved in OA advocacy are themselves Wikipedia enthusiasts or editors. A joint conference where both communities meet as peers is chance to turn the shared goals into more concrete activities.

The Wellcome Trust is "a global charitable foundation dedicated to achieving extraordinary improvements in health by supporting the brightest minds". in the UK, it is one of the leading organisations promoting open access to research and encouraging scientists to engage with the public. It funds an enormous amount of cutting-edge research related to health, as well as the preservation and use of existing knowledge. Its other activities with Wikimedia include funding the Cancer Research UK Wikipedian In Residence. In January 2014, Wellcome Images released 100,000 historical images under a Wikipedia-compatible licence.

How will success be measured?

• Number of attendees
• 'friends' and member signups arising from the event
• variety of organisations represented
• attendee evaluation
• open content projects that result
• media coverage
• sessions written up as papers
• new wiki editors registered/ lapsed editors reactivated
• What else?

Publicity

can begin once the dates and some named speakers are finalised.

• Jointly via Wellcome Trust blog/social media and WMUK blog/social media. Logos of both organisations should appear on publicity material.
• WMUK has contacts in a couple of dozen scholarly societies/ research centres. Should be encouraged to post notifications in their newsletters/ social media.
• WMUK education contacts/ expert outreach contacts in science areas (listed on the Office wiki)
• Wikimania 2014 attendees?
• Those of us who work in scientific institutions can promote the event in their own workplaces.
  • We'd need a PDF poster to share or print.
• Press releases as the conference approaches, perhaps leading on a controversial statement by a speaker, e.g. "Wikipedia is the future of scientific publishing"-PMR. Jointly decided/ released by Wellcome Trust/Wikimedia UK?