The data needs cleaning (and every small edit or redirect helps), but multiple sources agree on a trend similar to this, from 2011 to 2014 (partial): 943, 778, 489, 250. http://wikipapers.referata.com/wiki/2011 http://wikipapers.referata.com/wiki/2012 http://wikipapers.referata.com/wiki/2013 http://wikipapers.referata.com/wiki/2014
What's going on?
Nemo
Without digging into the details, my first guess would be that more non-English research is being conducted as the size of non-English Wikipedias increase. Those conducting such research are less likely to publish English summaries of their work, making them less "findable" and thus less likely to be linked from the pages you specify.
On Sun, Nov 9, 2014 at 11:39 AM, Federico Leva (Nemo) nemowiki@gmail.com wrote:
The data needs cleaning (and every small edit or redirect helps), but multiple sources agree on a trend similar to this, from 2011 to 2014 (partial): 943, 778, 489, 250. http://wikipapers.referata.com/wiki/2011 http://wikipapers.referata.com/wiki/2012 http://wikipapers.referata.com/wiki/2013 http://wikipapers.referata.com/wiki/2014
What's going on?
Nemo
Wiki-research-l mailing list Wiki-research-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wiki-research-l
Jane Darnell, 09/11/2014 12:05:
Those conducting such research are less likely to publish English summaries of their work,
Interesting suggestion, but how does this matter/how would this bias operate? Most WikiPapers contributors aren't English native speakers. What databases, archives or other resources are English-specific?
In my last import there were 132 non-English publications vs. 4424 English publications.
making them less "findable" and thus less likely to be linked from the pages you specify.
How to find them, then? Until we find them, we won't know they're missing. :-) If I look at some "neutral" resource like http://www.dart-europe.eu/basic-results.php?kw%5B%5D=wiki&f=n I see we're probably missing some, but not many and certainly not 2 thirds. We have a number of todos http://wikipapers.referata.com/wiki/WikiPapers:TODO but perhaps we need to look into some institutional meta-repository.
Nemo
Sorry, like you I have no idea how to find "unfindable" papers written in foreign languages. Yet another factor may be a growing reluctance among students and/or their professors to release papers to a wider audience. I don't think many research students are convinced that the publication of their paper could be beneficial for their employment prospects in the short- or long term, especially when we as a community tend to slam any and all research in the typical pedantic wiki way.
On Sun, Nov 9, 2014 at 12:26 PM, Federico Leva (Nemo) nemowiki@gmail.com wrote:
Jane Darnell, 09/11/2014 12:05:
Those conducting such research are less likely to publish English summaries of their work,
Interesting suggestion, but how does this matter/how would this bias operate? Most WikiPapers contributors aren't English native speakers. What databases, archives or other resources are English-specific?
In my last import there were 132 non-English publications vs. 4424 English publications.
making them less "findable" and thus less
likely to be linked from the pages you specify.
How to find them, then? Until we find them, we won't know they're missing. :-) If I look at some "neutral" resource like http://www.dart-europe.eu/ basic-results.php?kw[]=wiki&f=n I see we're probably missing some, but not many and certainly not 2 thirds. We have a number of todos http://wikipapers.referata.com/wiki/WikiPapers:TODO but perhaps we need to look into some institutional meta-repository.
Nemo
Wiki-research-l mailing list Wiki-research-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wiki-research-l
This sort of thing happens all the time in the research world.
Someone publishes a paper about some new topic, in this case Wikipedia. Everyone else says "hey, maybe I can apply my usual research techniques that I use to study frog mating to Wikipedia instead, hmm, how about the ways editors find collaborators to work on articles?". A rash of papers then follows where people apply their usual research interests to Wikipedia in some way.
But once you've got a few papers on any particular aspect, the low-hanging fruit dries up. "Hmm, I've already written papers studying women and Wikipedia, gay women and Wikipedia, mothers and Wikipedia, post-menopausal women and Wikipedia, and I'm running out of ideas, pregnant women and Wikipedia, maybe?"
So people move on to the next new thing, "hmm, how can I apply frog mating to the war in Iraq? maybe something in relation to the recruitment of foreign fighters, that's topical!".
After the initial flush of enthusiasm for anything new, the long term researchers have to dig deeper and harder for a new publishable result. In a world where the phrase "smallest unit of publishable research" has entered our language, Wikipedia may have become a barren well, left to those who genuinely care about the topic. In this regard, I note Aaron's recent comment about it being the time to tackle the "hard problems". Hard problems tend to need lots of work, often produce marginal results (they are usually highly complex so working on any aspect in isolation often produces marginal improvement), but if you crack them, you might get a Nobel prize. Or you might not. That's not too appealing to the researchers trying to bulk up their publication list for that elusive next job, tenure or promotion.
I think we may just be seeing a natural cycle (or unnatural, depending on how you view these things).
Kerry
How complete is wikipapers referata site? Could it be the case of lack of updates/maintenance/editor activity resulting in missing data?
--
Piotr Konieczny, PhD http://hanyang.academia.edu/PiotrKonieczny http://scholar.google.com/citations?user=gdV8_AEAAAAJ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Piotrus
On 11/9/2014 19:39, Federico Leva (Nemo) wrote:
The data needs cleaning (and every small edit or redirect helps), but multiple sources agree on a trend similar to this, from 2011 to 2014 (partial): 943, 778, 489, 250. http://wikipapers.referata.com/wiki/2011 http://wikipapers.referata.com/wiki/2012 http://wikipapers.referata.com/wiki/2013 http://wikipapers.referata.com/wiki/2014
What's going on?
Nemo
Wiki-research-l mailing list Wiki-research-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wiki-research-l
Piotr Konieczny, 14/11/2014 09:24:
How complete is wikipapers referata site?
Rather complete. There are some duplicates but we definitely have the majority of the publications (perhaps 90 %?) known to most sources.
Could it be the case of lack of updates/maintenance/editor activity resulting in missing data?
I doubt it. It's possible however that there are biases in coverage, as Jane speculates. If you have some sources for numbers of publications in a certain language/topic/country/year, we may compare to those of WikiPapers and see how big the gap is.
Kerry, maybe it's just about things getting tough as you say. But I'm careful about such conclusions, just as I'm not convinced that the "everything easy has already been written" theory can explain the fall of new users after the peak in 2006/2007, across all Wikimedia projects however (un)developed. Much rather easy research would be possible, but we're not seeing it.
Nemo
Personally, I have seen no qualitative decrease in high quality studies of Wikimedia projects. It seems to me that a whole new class of studies about Wikidata are just gaining traction and that the ACM conferences I frequent have a renewed interest in Wikipedia as an instance of a mature open production system.
With that in mind, I can certainly believe that the rate of low impact studies has experienced substantial decline. It seems clear that Wikipedia -- as a research subject -- is no longer a subject that is interesting by default.
-Aaron
On Fri, Nov 14, 2014 at 4:01 AM, Federico Leva (Nemo) nemowiki@gmail.com wrote:
Piotr Konieczny, 14/11/2014 09:24:
How complete is wikipapers referata site?
Rather complete. There are some duplicates but we definitely have the majority of the publications (perhaps 90 %?) known to most sources.
Could it be the case of lack
of updates/maintenance/editor activity resulting in missing data?
I doubt it. It's possible however that there are biases in coverage, as Jane speculates. If you have some sources for numbers of publications in a certain language/topic/country/year, we may compare to those of WikiPapers and see how big the gap is.
Kerry, maybe it's just about things getting tough as you say. But I'm careful about such conclusions, just as I'm not convinced that the "everything easy has already been written" theory can explain the fall of new users after the peak in 2006/2007, across all Wikimedia projects however (un)developed. Much rather easy research would be possible, but we're not seeing it.
Nemo
Wiki-research-l mailing list Wiki-research-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wiki-research-l
wiki-research-l@lists.wikimedia.org