Wikipedia Science Conference

The Wellcome Building, home to the conference centre

In partnership with the Wellcome Trust, we are hosting a two-day conference, around the intersection of STEM subjects and Wikimedia, on 2nd and 3rd September 2015.

This is prompted by the growing interest in Wikipedia, Wikidata, Commons, and other Wikimedia projects as platforms for opening up the scientific process.

A call for papers and a booking form are in preparation.

Details

Where?

The Henry Wellcome Auditorium and Wellcome Collection Conference Centre, the Wellcome Collection, 183 Euston Road, London NW1 2BE, UK. This is opposite Euston Square tube and within easy walking distance of three other tube stations. It is close to the Euston, King's Cross and St. Pancras rail stations, and a short tube ride from Paddington.

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

When?

Weds 2nd to Thurs 3rd September

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, adding OA paper text to Wikipedia, 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

Confirmed speakers

• Dr Peter Murray Rust (User:Petermr) has confirmed (see his Wikimania 2014 talk).
• There will be someone from the Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute, Cambridge, who are using Wikipedia to share and improve data about proteins. MLP has been in touch with Dr Darren Logan.
• Dr Daniel Mietchen (User:Daniel Mietchen) has agreed.
• The Wellcome Trust will supply a speaker for the opening.
• We are approaching other speakers: suggestions are welcome by email to m.l.poulterbris.ac.uk .

Submitted talks/ panels/ demos

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 not have pre-arranged talks scheduled. An unconference method will be used to enable conference delegates to define the programme they want. This allows people to find others interested in the same topic and start a discussion. This will use a noticeboard for coordination and will require different areas to be available to break out into.

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 a reception in the evening between the two days, in the same buliding as the rest of the conference.

Hackathon

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

- specific suggestion for this: Wikipedia-Europe PMC joint hackathon at the EMBL-EBI (Hinxton Genome Campus) as satellite event … on Friday the 4th Sept? (suggestion from Jo McEntyre)

Interested Wikimedians

Add yourself here to indicate an interest. Optionally, add a one-line description of why the conference is relevant to you.

• User:MartinPoulter (Former Jisc Wikimedia Ambassador; former WMUK Associate promoting Expert outreach)
• User:Johnbod (Wikipedian in Residence, The Royal Society; Wikipedian in Residence, Cancer Research UK)
• User:Pigsonthewing (Wikipedian in Residence, ORCID; Wikimedian in Residence, Royal Society of Chemistry)
• User:Yaris678
• User:HenryScow (Cancer Research UK)
• User:Fnorman (Librarian, MRC National Institute of Medical Research)
• User:Sjgknight
• User:Daniel Mietchen (Creator of OAI Importer bot; former Wikipedian in Residence at Open Knowledge Foundation)
• Brian Kelly (User:Lisbk)
• Stevie Benton (WMUK staff)
• Mike Peel (talk) 21:10, 15 September 2014 (BST)
• Harry Mitchell
• Anke Holst
• RexxS
• Ben Moore
• Sam Walton (astrophysics student)
• CT Cooper
• Fabian Tompsett (WMUK) (talk)
• Jenny Molloy (Coordinator, Open Knowledge Open Science Working Group)
• Magnus Manske
• Ally Crockford (Wikimedian in Residence, National Library of Scotland; Medical Humanities researcher/teacher)
• John Levin
• add yourself here

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 which have been uploaded to Wikimedia Commons by a volunteer.

See /Planning subpage for suggestions about timescale/ publicity etc.