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.

Proposals are being reviewed and a booking form is 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 the charge to attendees will be small. There will be a fund to support some travel costs.

Audience

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

Wikimedia UK's Friendly space policy will apply at the event and there will be trusted individuals on hand with whom you can raise any related issues.

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 other Wikimedia projects (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/or Wikimedia as platforms for research, including citizen science (e.g. the Research portal).
• Wikipedia and/or Wikimedia as models for scientific publishing (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/or Wikimedia as platforms for scientific education.
• Under-represented groups in STEM subjects: is Wikipedia reinforcing stereotypes or providing role models? What is being done?

Programme

Keynotes

• Dame Wendy Hall: Professor of Computer Science, University of Southampton
• Dr Peter Murray Rust (User:Petermr): Reader, University of Cambridge

Other confirmed speakers

• Dr Daniel Mietchen (User:Daniel Mietchen): creator of the Open Access Media Importer Bot
• Michelle Brook: Science policy consultant and Open Access activist
• Melissa Highton, (User:Melissa_Highton) Director of Learning, Teaching and Web Services at the University of Edinburgh, will speak about Women in Science editathons
• Dr Darren Logan (w:User:Rockpocket), Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute
• Andy Mabbett, User:Pigsonthewing (Wikimedian in Residence, Royal Society of Chemistry; Wikipedian in Residence, ORCID)

Submitted talks/ panels/ demos

Proposals are being accepted until 8 May: use the form below.

Unconference and training

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. There are a number of breakout rooms in the conference centre. As part of the unconference, attendees will be able to get training on wiki editing, and on finding articles in their subject area. Please bring a laptop computer if you want to take part in this.

Evening event

There will be a reception in the evening between the two days, in the same building as the rest of the conference.

Hackathon: Wikimedia and Research

There will be a related free event on Saturday 5 September, from 10am to 3pm. It will be led by Daniel Mietchen (former Wikimedian In Residence at the Open Knowledge Foundation) and Stefan Kasberger (GESIS Leibniz Institute for Social Sciences/ ContentMine/ openscienceASAP/ Open Knowledge Austria). Please bring a laptop.

There are many technical aspects to the interaction between the Wikimedia and research communities and platforms. This day is dedicated to exploring them together with others who share an interest in these matters. This may include work on

• content import (example)
• semantic mapping (example)
• tools for collaboration (example)
• social hacking (example)
• analyses (example)

or many other things. Suggestions are most welcome.

The hackathon venue is not the conference venue, but in the basement of Development House, 56-64 Leonard Street, London EC2A 4LT. Old Street tube station is very close by. The door may well be locked but there is an intercom through which you can request access.

Propose a session

Note that the conference will feature a large unconference block, so even if your proposed session is not accepted, it will be possible to shape the conference just by turning up. Proposals already submitted are added to this list.

Note: You need to log in (or create an account here) in order to submit a proposal.

Entering your title in the box below and filling in the pro-forma will create a public submission on this wiki.

If you have any problem using the form, please email m.l.poulterbristol.ac.uk

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 (Wikimedian In Residence at the Bodleian Libraries, Oxford; Former Jisc Wikimedia Ambassador; former WMUK Associate promoting Expert outreach)
• User:Johnbod (Wikipedian in Residence, The Royal Society; Wikipedian in Residence, Cancer Research UK)
• Andy Mabbett, 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)
• Harry Mitchell
• Anke Holst
• RexxS
• Ben Moore
• Sam Walton (astrophysics student)
• CT Cooper
• Leutha (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
• Henry Potts (Senior Lecturer @ UCL Institute of Health Informatics; have carried out research on Wikipedia)
• Melissa Highton (Director of IT, University of Edinburgh)
• Julia Kloppenburg (WMDE)
• Paul Wilkinson (on CIPR working group on science communications)
• Thryduulf (talk: local | en.wp | en.wikt) (Wikimedia editor and trainer)
• Fæ (talk)
• Anthonyhcole
• User:EdSaperia (Open Access Reader)
• Dario Taraborelli (Research & Data lead, Wikimedia Foundation; coauthor of the altmetrics manifesto and WMF's OA policy)
• Michael Markie (Associate Publisher, F1000Research)
• Ross Mounce (ContentMine, Open Knowledge Open Science Working Group, Open Research London, Postdoc)
• The wub (talk)
• User:Duncan Hull (University of Manchester)
• User:Arbeck (Ant Beck:University of Nottingham)
• Ginny Hendricks (CrossRef.org - scholarly metadata)

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 Fæ.

Planning

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