Dear all,
Wikimedia Commons hosts a lot of images (and some other files) from OA publishers (e.g. http://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special%3ASearch&redirs=1... ), and I am wondering whether that could be streamlined a bit.
Some issues that possibly stand in the way: (1) It is not clear what percentage of such files from suitably licensed papers would be of use in pages that use media hosted at Commons (either at Wikimedia or via InstantCommons). If that percentage is low, then the costs of hosting the unused files may outweigh the benefit of having the used ones, though the ease of automated upload (and possibly gardening) could shift the balance quite a bit. (2) Every publisher (and often journal) organize their files differently, which the upload scripts would have to take into account. Would this mean that multiple bot accounts would have to be requested as per http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:Bots/Requests ? If so, some means of enforcing common standards would be necessary.
Not sure whether RCom-l is the right place to discuss that, but I thought I'd give it a try, since working on standards is part of our mission.
Thanks and cheers,
Daniel