While we're on the topic of restrictive licensing, I have some comments to make about Covid-19 literature, and what to do about it.

In the familiar good news, bad news pattern, major medical publishers are allowing pandemic-related articles to be read online, even though their copyright status would normally mean they would be behind a paywall. That means that numerous sources used in Wikipedia, for example, can be read, when it would be more usual to need an institutional subscription.

The fine print:

- No Creative Commons license applies, in general. 

- There is a time limit. The article may go closed again, for example when the WHO says the pandemic is over. Or, when the publisher feels like it.

I'm working on a Wikidata Covid-19 literature project. One part of it is to use Wikidata property P953 "full work available at" to store the URLs at which papers can be read. The data entry involved in this step is really simple, if an item for the paper exists, and you have a URL.

In some cases the URL will also give you a Creative Commons license: PubMed Central is a site that is good at telling you about CC licenses, for example. Wikidata can store the license info as P275. You then have a genuine open access paper, not just a grace-and-favour reading permission.

The other point I'd like to make is that these URLs may not go to waste, when and if the publisher later closes up the paper. The Wayback Machine of the Internet Archive may then have a stored copy.

If you are interested in knowing more, and working in this area, please contact me offlist. I'm pulling together a project about data entry, and am concentrating on the sources already used in pandemic-related Wikipedia articles.

Data entry, on Wikidata, is not that hard to get into, but is a devil-in-the-detail kind of area. And leads onto queries. The documentation could undoubtedly be improved if people bring up their issues, especially if they are new to Wikidata. I wouldn't plan anything as grand as "online training", but I'd be happy to give online support and perhaps do some calls.

Charles