Hi Everyone!
This caught my attention on Monday, and I think that there are many in
the group who would be interested in helping to submit a response to
OSTP (Office of Science and Technology Policy).
http://www.federalregister.gov/articles/2011/11/04/2011-28623/request-for-i…
Take a look at the call, I also believe that the WMF might also be
putting together a response? I am not 100% sure, but maybe we all could
coordinate something. I am also not familiar with how responses are
submitted hopefully someone in the group knows! The response is due Jan
2, 2012.
Best,
Cheryl (user:MichChemGSI)
All,
here's a message from Siko, WMF Head of Community Fellowships. As with the 2011 Summer of Research, WMF is willing to fund research (both in the form of individual fellowships and small grants) to contribute to a better understanding of our community and projects. While there are existing procedures for community fellowships and grants, we don't have guidelines to apply for research fellowships/research grants.
Some community members have started submitting research proposals for RCom review and I thought this could be a good chance to get Siko and Asaf (Head of the WMF grants program) to help us draft guidelines for the evaluation of research fellowship/research grant proposals, which are currently missing from http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Research:FAQ
What I envision is a two-tiered process:
(1) RCom will first review proposals based on its standard procedures, regardless of funding requests. We will solicit the opinion of external referees via a single-blind review process when needed (we did this for the EPIC/Oxford proposal). We will then write our recommendations whether a specific proposal is methodologically sound, relevant and non-disruptive to our community to help WMF make a funding decision .
(2) WMF will request supplementary information to projects applying for funding and use this information, feedback from RCom and its internal assessment of the priority/usefulness of the proposal to make a funding decision.
This will help RCom focus on the research value of the proposal per se while leaving to the WMF fellowship/grant program the actual funding decision. On a related note, I am working closely with Philippe Beaudette to configure SugarCRM to help us triage, handle and assign requests for RCom review.
Please let me know if you have any comments or concerns on the overall proposal. As Siko notes, the Dispute Resolution project below is a research proposal from a community member asking for regular SR support/review, not a WMF-sponsored project, and potentially a good case to get this process started.
Dario
Begin forwarded message:
> From: Siko Bouterse <sbouterse(a)wikimedia.org>
> Date: November 22, 2011 10:33:58 AM PST
> To: Dario Taraborelli <dtaraborelli(a)wikimedia.org>
> Subject: surveys by community members
>
> Hi Dario,
>
> This is a survey request from a community member interested in learning more about his Wikipedia projects, for RCom's review:
> http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Research:Wikipedia_Dispute_Resolution
>
> Background:
> Steven Zhang is active in MedCab and the creator of some other DR pages and processes on EN:WP. I've been speaking with him about the possibility of doing a fellowship on dispute resolution, though an exact project is still to be pinned down and nothing is approved for fellowship at this point. Although the survey is not an official WMF project, and Steven is acting in the capacity of community member, I am interested in the results of his survey to learn more about current issues with DR and see if there are projects that we should support in the form of a fellowship.
>
> This may be a growing need, I've gotten a couple of similar inquiries so far and expect they will increase as we ramp up community fellowships. I'm curious to know what the RCom process looks like for surveys run by community members, some of whom might not have the same research background or methodological training as academic researchers, but are motivated to learn and share understanding about their community and projects. Is this something worth asking about on the RCom list? (If so, feel free to forward my message).
>
> In this case, its a relatively small sample size so hopefully not too disruptive. I think Steven could also use some guidance about what free survey collector would be recommended for use - is RCom ok with something simple like Google Forms or have other recommendations?
>
> Thanks!
> Siko
>
> --
> Siko Bouterse
> Head of Community Fellowships
> Wikimedia Foundation, Inc.
>
> sbouterse(a)wikimedia.org
>
>
Hey folks,
This proposal is an important milestone for our subject recruitment
processes, since it represents the first mass recruitment request (200-300
responses needed). I'm hoping to either show a high level of support with
this poll or discover what problems still need to be dealt with.
I'd like to close the poll by *Wednesday @ noon UTC*. Please make sure to
chime in.
See poll:
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Research_talk:Anonymity_and_conformity_over_…
-Aaron
Below is a message I received from one of the researchers requesting
support<http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Research:Anonymity_and_conformity_over_the_n…>for
subject recruitment. I'm forwarding his questions because I think
they
get to the point of some of our discussions about sharing datasets and the
redistribution of manuscripts produced as a result of a study.
I'd like to recommend that Michael withhold his dataset until he feels
comfortable publishing it, but I have been advising him that he is unlikely
to get scooped on the results of a survey he performed. I don't feel
comfortable suggesting that he risk the rewards of his work against his own
judgement.
As for the reuse rights. It seems like we have discussed this and decided
that studies that simply come to RCom for help vetting their proposed
research would not need to provide rights to distribute the manuscript. As
a side-note, it is important that the language he references is changed to
specify that the right to "adapt" the manuscript is *not* passed on to the
Wikimedia Foundation. I'd like to tell him that this requirement does not
apply to him since he did not receive substantial support, but on the other
hand, he research plan involves contacting a rather large amount of
Wikipedians. Thoughts?
-Aaron
---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Michael Tsikerdekis <tsikerdekis(a)gmail.com>
Date: Mon, Nov 14, 2011 at 2:13 PM
Subject: Re: University Email account
To: Aaron Halfaker <aaron.halfaker(a)gmail.com>
Hey Aaron,
first of all thanks for all the support with the project. I started
reviewing a couple of things so that i can have everything ready when the
time comes. I need your help with a couple of things.
First, i decided to publish the open data under the CC-BY-SA 3.0 licence. I
don't believe that there will be anyone that would actually claim the
research analysis as there own based on someone else's survey. I do hope
though that people might in the future reuse the data and cross-reference
it with data from other research surveys. Do you think i should put
anything in the data page like "data can be used for publishing in a
scientific journal after the author of the survey publishes the results
first"? Or does it sound dumb and i am being paranoid? :-)
The second thing is about the reuse rights "The author(s) of the manuscript
retains a non-exclusive right to copy, distribute, transmit and adapt their
work, and grants WMF a non-exclusive right to do the same"
Most journals(if not all) grant an non-exclusive right for the author. I
have no idea how to grant the same right to the WMF. I can put WMF as a
co-author, but can you put an organization as a co-author? I could send an
email to the journal when the time comes but i was wondering if you already
know anything about it.
Mike
I am thrilled to announce that Melanie Kill (aka User:Drkill) – assistant professor at the University of Maryland and former Wikimedia Summer of Research fellow – just joined RCom-l as a new member of the committee. Her addition not only brings to the RCom a talented Wikipedia researcher (Melanie specializes in digital rhetoric with a focus on the history of the encyclopedia genre) but also bumps our female membership to an all-time record of 36.3%.
Melanie, do you mind adding a short biographical blurb about yourself to http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Research:Committee?
Please join me in welcoming Melanie on board!
Dario
Daniel,
(cc'ing Phoebe)
can you help lead the drafting of WMF's response to this consultation?
Dario
Begin forwarded message:
> From: phoebe ayers <phoebe.wiki(a)gmail.com>
> Date: November 7, 2011 12:01:39 PM PST
> To: Research into Wikimedia content and communities <wiki-research-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org>, Wikimedia Foundation Mailing List <foundation-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org>
> Subject: [Wiki-research-l] Fwd: Open Access to Federally Funded Scientific Research
> Reply-To: Research into Wikimedia content and communities <wiki-research-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org>
>
> Following up on last year's OSTP call for comments (which I also sent
> to foundation-l), the US government is seeking public comment on more
> technical questions (including policy, repository and standards
> development) related to sharing federally-funded scholarly data and
> publications. This process is relevant for shaping access to a major
> source of free knowledge, and such open access issues are of general
> interest to many of us. Comments are due in January.
>
> -- phoebe
>
>
> ----- Forwarded Message -----
>
> The White House Office for Science and Technology Policy (OSTP) has
> released two Requests for Information, one on public access to digital
> data resulting from federally funded scientific research and one on
> public access to peer-reviewed scholarly publications resulting from
> federally funded research. Responses are due January.
>
> (1) "[T]his Request for Information (RFI) offers the opportunity for
> interested individuals and organizations to provide recommendations on
> approaches for ensuring long-term stewardship and encouraging broad
> public access to unclassified digital data that result from federally
> funded scientific research....Response Date: January 12, 2012...."
> http://goo.gl/L1jn3
>
> (2) "[T]his Request for Information (RFI) offers the opportunity for
> interested individuals and organizations to provide recommendations on
> approaches for ensuring long-term stewardship and broad public access
> to the peer-reviewed scholarly publications that result from federally
> funded scientific research....Response Date:
> January 2, 2012...."
> http://goo.gl/vTP18
>
>
>
>
> --
> * I use this address for lists; send personal messages to phoebe.ayers
> <at> gmail.com *
>
> _______________________________________________
> Wiki-research-l mailing list
> Wiki-research-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org
> https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wiki-research-l
For those of you who didn't make it to the RCom meeting last Thursday, I'd like to announce that Cheryl Moy has joined the committee as a new member.
Please join me in welcoming her on board! Melanie Kill, our other new RCom candidate, couldn't make it to the meeting due to a schedule conflict but we will try to change the calendar of our meetings to allow her to participate.
We had a quite productive meeting, you fill find detailed notes at: http://etherpad.wikimedia.org/RCom201111
These are the main highlights:
Schedule of RCom meetings
Dana will run a new doodle poll to identify a new time slot for our future RCom meetings to take into account the time constraints of our new members (Melanie in particular mentioned that the current conflict is totally incompatible with her teaching commitments)
Subject recruitment
Dario and Aaron are working on new mechanisms to triage requests, have a minimum number of RCom participants in the review of each proposal, involve the community and formalize the review procedure in the case of subject recruitment requests.
Science WiR program
Cheryl, Daniel and Yaroslav will lead the development of a WiR program for research/scientific institutions broadly modeled after GLAM.
Research Index
Dario announced the redesign of the research project directory to increase the categorization of projects by various criteria.
Privacy policy review
In the context of the drafting of Wikimedia's new privacy policy, Dario will lead a consultation to engage with the wiki research community to try and understand (1) what Wikimedia data academic research would like to have access to and (2) whether these requests are compatible and can inform the drafting of the new policy
OA policy
Daniel will post a proposal to finalize
Expert participation
Dario will present new results from the expert participation survey at Science Online 2012 in a joint session with people involved in the APS initiative.
Wikimedia France research award
Rémi Bachelet and Carol Ann O'Hare from Wikimedia France are soliciting feedback from RCom on a new research award they are organizing to highlight the best research on WIkimedia projects. Please take a moment to review their proposal: http://framapad.org/Wikimedia-20France-20Research-20Award
Many thanks to everybody who participated!
Dario