Hello all,
This email talks about an upcoming effort to develop the Wikipedia article on "open science" at the the Open Knowledge Foundation conference 16-18 September in Geneva and online. The request is that anyone who is able should consider submitting something to that Wikipedia article - or to this list for those unfamiliar with Wikipedia - so that people can learn more about open science. The rest of this email talks about that - there is no need to read further if you are not interested in participating.
Why this mattersOne way to describe open science is to say that it is the idea that all science intended to be made available should be made available. Right now there are barriers to collaboration in science, including inability of researchers to read papers (lack of open access) and inability of researchers to share data (lack of open data).
Since the Wikipedia article on "open science" is the first returned result for a search engine query on the topic, securing the usefulness of this Wikipedia article is probably a prerequisite to anticipating that mass media will ever talk about open science and thus encourage a social movement.
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_science>
How anyone can helpThe easiest way that anyone can develop any Wikipedia article is to make sure that all major sources describing a topic are at least cited and mentioned in the references section of that Wikipedia article. If sources are not identified, then no one can develop the article. Please look at the sources already cited and if anyone knows a fundamental source of "open science" not mentioned in this article then please post it on Wikipedia or if that is not possible, mention it in this mailing list.
Otherwise, anyone can edit Wikipedia at any time. Feel free to jump in by going to any Wikipedia article and clicking "edit" at the top of the page. If you do something wrong then I assure you that your contribution will be salvaged and integrated by others.
Although the conference and drive to improve this article is 16-18 September, actually you can feel free to contribute to Wikipedia at any time.
Who can do this
Stakeholders in the public perception of the concept of "open science" should consider that at least this project will influence them, just because this article will be for the foreseeable future the central source of information on this topic. Anyone who likes can give input.
This effort is being organized by Ceyla of HackYourPhD.org. She just went on an international open science tour and documented an oral history of open science. She will be at OKCon in Geneva and can assist people at that conference. I [[user:bluerasberry]] on Wikipedia or
lane@bluerasberry.com can assist people on Wikipedia or otherwise online.
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http://hackyourphd.org/en/> Ceyla - at the conference
<https://etherpad.mozilla.org/OKCon-OpenScienceHackDay> <------- Most details planned here
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Bluerasberry> Lane - online only
I would also like to advertise that there is a mailing list for the Wikipedia community about internal policy on open access - open access advocates may want to subscribe to this here.